“Another year, another slate of movie releases in the history books, and with it a bevy of new characters gracing the big screen. Just like making the movies themselves, though, making a truly memorable character is a major challenge. You have to get them right on the page before you can cast them, for one … Continue reading
Too many contemporary biopics consciously and repeatedly make the same mistake: they struggle in vain to dilute the whole of their subjects’ lives into two hour chunks of running time, and they often end up scattered, non-cohesive, and aimless as a result. It’s a dual-pronged problem of too much content being stuffed into too narrow … Continue reading
The writer of Training Day takes his umpteenth stab at telling a story of heroism, crime, and male emotion filtered through the lens of South Central law enforcement and gang culture. Is David Ayer just a one-trick pony, or is he a driven perfectionist? Continue reading
Battle: Los Angeles feels very emblematic of how a film which simply fails to totally live up to its promise and expectations can be more disappointing than a simply outright awful one. Jonathan Liebesman’s fourth feature length movie isn’t terrible by any stretch of the means, but lacking in all areas of substance Battle becomes … Continue reading
Part 2 of my 2011 preview commences…now! (Part 1 can be perused here, at your leisure.) X-Men: First Class— By happy coincidence, the first trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s period prequel to the X-Men franchise hit just last week, and guess what? It looks really good. Focusing specifically on the relationship between Erik Lehnsherr, the man … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 