There’s a type of action movie that requires a lot of its audience. You have to suspend not just your disbelief, but also your common sense. If you’re willing to do that, it’ll give you the ride of your life – but if you’re not, you are in for an unpleasant time. “Olympus Has...
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Some thrillers are so convoluted that it’s almost impossible to discuss them without revealing twists and turns best left to be revealed in the watching. “Side Effects” is one such -- the first act of the story can be mostly gathered from the previews and is fairly simple, but where the plot goes from...
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Written and Directed by: Tommy Wirkola Starring: Gemma Arterton, Jeremy Renner, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare Rated: R for strong fantasy horror violence and gore, brief sexuality/nudity, and language There’s something ever-appealing to me about fantasy-action films. The good ones don’t take themselves seriously and are pure fun, and the bad ones are so deliciously...
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Anyone who sees the trailers for “Parker” and is strongly reminded of the 1999 Mel Gibson movie “Payback” is on the money -- both are based on novels from the same series by Donald E. Westlake (under the pseudonym Richard Stark). They’re based on different novels, but have very similar premises: career criminal Parker...
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Directed by: Jee-woon Kim Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eduardo Noriega, Jaime Alexander, Luis Guzman, Zach Gilford, Rodrigo Santoro, Johnny Knoxville Rated: R for strong bloody violence throughout, and language It’s been eight years since we’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in any major role other than Governor of California, and he’s picked a perfect film for his...
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“Django Unchained” is, on its surface, a fairly straightforward “man is wronged and loses his woman, then meets a man who helps him achieve his quest to avenge himself and get his woman back” sort of story. It’s certainly easy to enjoy the film on that level, especially if you’re a fan of Quentin...
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Sometimes watching a movie is sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion, as if a child has set up a train set so that several trains will all smash into each other. “Killing Them Softly” is a movie like that. We know from the moment we meet most of the characters...
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The moment the opening credits for “The Man with the Iron Fists” start to roll, you can tell exactly what kind of movie it is. There’s an explanatory voiceover and a massive fight, paused periodically for over-saturated, old-school-style still frames for each credit -- and the credits are all in both English and Chinese....
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The “Silent Hill” series of video games is enormously popular among a select crowd of fans – their complex mythology and survival-horror genre (meaning combat is less important than finding a way to survive long enough to escape) are very engaging to the right kind of person. The film franchise is notably less celebrated,...
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Hollywood loves making movies about movies, especially ones that mock the film industry. Make one that's a movie about a fake movie and a period piece to boot, and you have a winner. That winner is "Argo," which tells the story of how the CIA teamed up with Hollywood and the Canadian government to...
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