Imagine you’re in a script development meeting at Perfect World Pictures and decide that you really like certain elements of Frozen, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Maleficent, Time Bandits, Game of Thrones and other big fantasy productions and just toss all your ideas in the blender. You then send the entire script to the special effects house, along with a big check, and figure that with so many cultural touchpoints and a stellar…Read More
Review: Into the Woods
It’s tricky to translate musicals onto the big screen for a modern audience, which is why we rarely see them at the local cineplex. Les Miserables was an exception and surprised a lot of people with its strong box office performance, but it’s hard to think about another recent live action musical that was worth watching. Following its previous hit, the Disney musical Into the Woods is unsurprisingly similar to Les Miserables with its superb sets and star-studded cast. The…Read More
Review: Edge of Tomorrow
Groundhog Day is the first film I can recall seeing that mined the humor in a temporal glitch. Phil (Bill Murray) lives through the same day time and again, gradually learning how to maneuver through the inevitable obstacles to achieve the requisite happy ending. Amusing as that film is, however, there’s a depth to the premise that’s ignored. Enter the amazing film Inception. Now, to be fair, Inception isn’t about a temporal glitch as much as it is…Read More
Review: Looper
In the closing years of this century, organized crime syndicates have a problem with the standard tactic of threatening to kill someone for not cooperating because it appears that every person on Earth is tracked and can’t die without leaving vital information about their death behind. By a lucky coincidence, however, it turns out that time travel has been invented and while it quickly becomes illegal, it does offer a rather neat solution for the…Read More
Review: The Adjustment Bureau
I’m not a particularly paranoid person, but there are times that I can be a bit suspicious about coincidences or “kismet”, things that are almost impossibly unlikely to have happened as they did. I’m not alone: sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick made a career out of asking “what’s behind the scenes” in a vast body of disturbing and thought-provoking stories, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Next and Paycheck. Add The Adjustment Bureau to…Read More
Review: Gulliver’s Travels
I attended a preview screening of Gulliver’s Travels about a week prior to it opening nationally. Most film screenings are theaters full of families who have scored free tickets through newspaper advertisements, radio promotions or similar, with a small number of seats reserved for us critics. The more base and crude the film, the more this can feel like the studio manipulating us reviewers: critics generally prefer complex, sophisticated films that tap into the rich…Read More