Let me take the mystery out of this review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens is good. It’s really good. You’re going to see it regardless of what I say, but trust me, you’re going to enjoy the heck out of it! Anyone who has been alive in the last fifty years knows the story arc of the Star Wars franchise, starting with 1977’s Star Wars IV: A New Hope, a film that introduced us to the great cinematic…Read More
Film Review: Outcast
There’s a certain style of storytelling in a Chinese historical film that requires Western viewers to adjust their perspective and expectations just a bit. A bit of the mythic, an exaggeration for moral and ethical effect, and battles that are always epic and heroes who stagger on and fight until the very end, pulling arrows out of their torso and daring their opponent to stick them with another sword because one wasn’t enough to stop…Read More
Review: Takers
The premise of Takers couldn’t have been better tailored to my cinematic interests. A team of criminals who engineer and pull off perfect robberies, with timing down to the fraction of a second, deciding to do one last job, even as they’re suspicious of the source of the information, while an obsessive cop is hot on their trail, determined to break the case. Unfortunately, the film itself was so sloppy and riddled with clichés that…Read More