It’s fitting that Len Wiseman’s “Total Recall” remake features a gigantic robot army, given that his films have always demonstrated the bare minimum level of interest in actual people. That’s why Wiseman was a particularly poor choice for adapting Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece about a man who discovers that his memories are false and he’s […]
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Todd Solondz’s films are trips into abysses of intense misery, seriously disturbing examinations of lower-middle-class suburban despair. Almost irreverently infused with shocking dark humor and achingly unsentimental, his better works are beautifully strange pieces of filmmaking, aggressively painful stories that manage to feel profound even as they resemble rides through an emotional hell. Then there’s
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It’s hard to deny that an insidiousness permeates Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, and not just because of the real life unpleasantness that has transpired offscreen. “The Dark Knight Rises” is almost unbearably grim, a tangle of frayed nerves and cultural angst. The fiery and destructive imagery of the ad campaign symbolizes Batman’s rebirth, but could
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This is the Oliver Stone I like. In recent years, the famously intense, quasi-loony auteur has produced one oddity after another, from a big budget catastrophe (“Alexander”) to a saintly solemn portrayal of 9/11 responders (“World Trade Center”) to a schizophrenic hit-piece on President 43 (“W.”). None of them reached the thematic highs of “Platoon,”
When doing press for comic book movies, directors and actors almost always claim that they counted themselves as diehard fans of the source material long before they signed on to the lucrative task of adapting it for the screen. While this is likely more often than not a lie, Mark Webb was clearly telling the
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“Magic Mike” is certain to disappoint a lot of people. Anyone familiar with Steven Soderbergh knew that his latest work certainly couldn’t be the sexy, slick male stripper fantasy that Warner Bros’ marketing campaign has made it out to be. Those expecting a semi-erotic, amusing romp likely won’t leave satisfied by the 10 minutes or
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“That’s My Boy” begins with a felony being committed, but the movie itself is only a serious misdemeanor. Film critics share a mutually understood sense of dread every time we are forced to see the latest of Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison productions, which are all ceaseless assaults on the good sensibilities of those who enjoy
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“The Usual Suspects” scribe Christopher McQuarrie’s “The Way of the Gun” failed to catch on during its 2000 release. More than a decade later, little has changed, as the film has reached the edges of cult admiration yet remains generally unacknowledged, a work with admired elements and scenes that barely registers on the movie landscape
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Given its pedigree and hype, one would expect “Prometheus” to have Great Film written all over it. This is an even more important label than Oscar Material, because Great Films are the ones that set the standards and populate the coffee table books, becoming the currency of Best lists and endless debates about what works
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Would it surprise you to learn that Kristen Stewart makes an unconvincing military leader? The fact that I can even start a review of “Snow White and the Huntsman” that way cements the film’s status as one of the summer’s more peculiar would-be hits. Stylistically, the film pushes no particularly eccentric boundaries, but one can
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