Tag: movie review

Movie Review: Lawless (2012)

Were it not for Killer Joe, Lawless would almost certainly be 2012’s standard-bearer for stylized violence, regarding blood and guts as substances just as important to its function as plot or character. That’s fair, given the particular violence of the era, but what’s so striking about the throat-slittings and tommy-gun massacres of John Hillcoat‘s film isn’t the level of violence, but the calm its characters exhibit in the face of it. Its protagonists, the Bondurant brothers, are a trio of outlaw bootleggers, the leader of which survived the Great War, the flu, and all manner of worldly calamity. When you’ve got a reputation as an immortal, I guess it’s no big thing, watching another man get perforated. (more…)

September 2, 2012
Movie Review: The Babymakers (2012)

Halfway through director/co-star Jay Chandrasekhar‘s The Babymakers, the movie takes a hard turn from being one of the worst movies of the year to being one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. That isn’t an exaggeration. To this point, Chandrasekhar’s movie was a failing attempt at a Judd Apatow-styled raunchy-if-sweet romantic comedy, plagued mostly by flat line readings and an almost admirable belief in the endless humor of testicular trauma. Before Tommy (Paul Schneider) knocks on the door of a couple who’ve purchased his sperm from a bank he donated to years ago in order to afford an engagement ring for his wife Audrey (Olivia Munn), The Babymakers‘ only crimes were its catatonic script and a sleepwalking cast and crew. (more…)

August 30, 2012
Movie Review: Total Recall (2012)

The problem with Len Wiseman‘s remake of Total Recall is a lack of imagination. Yes, that’s a problem most remakes suffer from, but this version of Total Recall actually doesn’t clash much with the Paul Verhoeven-helmed, Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring film of the past. The names and plot remain more or less the same, as does the mysterious memory-implanting company ReKall, but where Verhoeven built an entire planet—populating it with mutants and promising that, yes, there is life on Mars—Wiseman shrinks his worldview considerably, ousting Mars entirely to focus on a poisoned-earth narrative where the rich get richer while the poor build the engines of their own destruction. While the living space issue and the rich/poor divide suggest a film mindful of current events (Verhoeven, by contrast, seemed more concerned with having a good time), Wiseman’s fictionalized current events are window dressing to a plot that sees a stock Chosen One fight to dismantle an army of killer robots. There’s a long, distinguished line of movies like that, and Total Recall just doesn’t stack up. (more…)

August 27, 2012
Movie Review: The Campaign (2012)

The Campaign is so obvious in its intent that, within the movie’s brief runtime, two characters are able to lament that “Big Money” controls the government. It concerns a pair of Congressional candidates from North Carolina—both of whom are almost criminally unfit for office—one of which is funded by the shadowy, money hungry Motch Brothers (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd), who hope to use their seat in congress to get the ball rolling on something they call “insourcing,” the importing of Chinese labor and regulations to American factories, to double their already stupendous profits.

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August 14, 2012
Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

The word “ambitious” has been used to describe Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises, almost as an apologia. In a summer containing superhero epics that’ve conquered the globe through a combination of charm, polish, and weightless fun, a glum, glowing Batman film can’t help but feel like a party-crasher, a mirthless rebuttal to the joyful hedonism proffered by Marvel Studios. It just so happens that Nolan’s third and final Batman film is ambitious. Functioning as a third act, it introduces a slew of new characters, expounds upon ideas Nolan subtly presented behind the smokescreen of Heath Ledger‘s mesmerizing performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, and brings his massive, decade-spanning and character-defining story to a close while leaving the door slightly ajar, suggesting both a Gotham without Batman, and a Gotham that can’t survive without one. It’s an audacious juggling act that’d succeed on the merit of sheer scale were it not for the fact that The Dark Knight Rises is just as successful as its predecessors in painting an only slightly-warped representation of our society, gently nudged to its extremes. If The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man were long on great power, trading in narrative subtly for titanic struggles between Good and Evil, The Dark Knight Rises is a sobering reminder that any struggle, no matter how titanic, is a grey affair, that the people who fight with the greatest power also have the greatest responsibilities and, ultimately, should make the greatest sacrifices. Its ambition is to hold its characters up to the audience as a mirror. (more…)

July 21, 2012
Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

In many ways, The Amazing Spider-Man is a response to Christopher Nolan‘s soon-to-be-concluding trilogy of Batman movies. It darkens the familiar, well-worn origins of Peter Parker (tough, considering that his origins involve the murder of his uncle), tones down on the camp that came to overwhelm Sam Raimi’s version of the character (much like Nolan’s trilogy rescued Batman from the quagmire of Joel Schumacher’s worst, campiest decisions), and manages, somehow, to be altogether from its billion-grossing predecessor. Despite the fact that Peter Parker’s in high school, The Amazing Spider-Man sees the character grow up considerably, becoming something more than a dopey whiz-kid in a mask. (more…)

July 18, 2012