Can a film be successful purely because of its special effects? That’s the key question around this seventh entry in the Fast and Furious franchise, and the answer is unfortunately obvious: yes, it can, and Furious 7 is going to be a success, in spite of the fact that there’s so much wrong with the movie. A franchise built around flawed action heroes whose superpower is the ability to drive cars quickly is on shaky ground…Read More
Review: Dracula Untold
While the popular mythology of vampires seems to be all sparkly and romantic (to wit, the banal Twilight series) the creatures themselves have a darker past, tapping into a mythic, archetypal fear of things that stir in the dark. Modern beliefs stem from 1890’s author Bram Stoker and his sensational book Dracula, but the myth is widely believed to have been based on the life of 15th Century nobleman Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia and…Read More
Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
While I love the great Tolkien books and am still amazed at the accomplishment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy — a film powerhouse that’s raked in almost three billion dollars worldwide — I have to be candid that I was not as thrilled with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. That’s the first part of a trilogy based on J.R.R.Tolkien’s book that introduced us to Middle Earth and its epic battles between the…Read More
Review: The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe introduced his 1840s readership to a new kind of fiction: detective novels. In his dark, twisted and often macabre books, criminals committed crimes and were typically identified and brought to justice by an officer of the law. But while his stories, including great horrors like ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and ‘The Raven’ enjoyed some level of popular and critical success, Poe…Read More
Review: The Three Musketeers
The Alexander Dumas book The Three Musketeers is one of the most exciting books of its era and still offers a thrilling adventure with the coming-of-age tale of D’Artagnon leaving home to join up with the fabled Musketeers, acting in the service of King Louis XIII against the evil Cardinal Richelieu. Sword fights, treachery, beautiful women, honor, it’s a truly epic tale. Which is why it’s been adapter to cinema again and again, with predictably mixed…Read More