There are few topics more complex for a film to tackle than time travel. Whether it’s the inherent paradoxes in the storyline (what if I go back and kill my grandfather?) or the need to have the viewer believe that the story doesn’t eats its own metaphorical tail in a dull, endless loop, the number of time travel movies that have delivered an engaging and interesting experience can be counted on one hand. Then there…Read More
Review: Exodus: Gods and Kings
When it comes to back stories, there’s no work more frequently tapped than The Bible. A rich document with thousands of stories, it’s produced solid cinema, like 1956’s The Ten Commandments, 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, 1959’s terrific Ben-Hur, the silly fun of Life of Brian from 1979, and even daft reinterpretations like the recent Noah [read my review of Noah]. There’s something inherently epic about the mythic story of the origin of humanity, and the…Read More
Review: Prometheus
I so wanted to love this movie, I’m such a big fan of director Ridley Scott. How can a film that purports to offer the backstory behind the blockbuster 1979 film Alien not be amazing? I rank Alien as one of the ten most influential science fiction films ever made, and getting its director back behind the camera to make another epic when his last sci-fi flick was the equally superb Blade Runner seems like…Read More
Review: Robin Hood
If you can get over the fact that this is most assuredly not the story of Robin Hood of Nottingham Forest, eternally battling the evil Sheriff of Nottingham for Maid Marion’s hand, you might find that Robin Hood is an interesting and exciting war movie set in medieval times with Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) as the central character. Like director Ridley Scott’s last outing with Crowe, Gladiator, Robin Hood is a dirty, gritty movie with so much…Read More