The premise of the new sci-fi horror thriller Life clearly borrows from two other excellent sci-fi thrillers Alien and The Andromeda Strain, and, like both of those, delivers a tense cinematic experience that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, guessing about the outcome up to the final scene. The action all takes place on the International Space Station, crewed by a team of six specialists who are focused on capturing and analyzing soil samples…Read More
Superhero movies have been in a bit of a rut with their PG-13 aesthetic, careful to appeal to teen boys as well as adult audiences, mostly male. Innuendo is fine, but sex? That’ll just get in the way of the vaunted PG-13 rating and cut out that critical 13-18yo audience. Fortunately director Tim Miller had the courage to flaunt that studio beancounter wisdom with the raunchy, crude, violent and surprisingly entertaining Deadpool, with the snarky and…Read More
Such a great idea for a movie. Such a dull, uninspired film. Here’s the premise: what if you could transfer your consciousness to another body and add decades to your life? The catch: you can’t interact with anyone from your old life, you have to start over with the new body. Would you do it? The central deceit of the story is that the new body isn’t actually a perfect human grown in a laboratory, as…Read More
No really, ‘R.I.P.D.’ is not 80% ‘Men In Black’ and 20% ‘Ghostbusters’. Well, maybe it kind of is. In fact, the officers of the “Rest In Peace Department” in the movie are assigned the task of making sure that dead people get the heck off Earth and either up to heaven or down to hell. No lingerers. Guess we better tell all those ghostly malevolent spirits waiting for the next horror film. Based on what…Read More
Just when I thought that the summer was going to be defined by a set of great tentpole films (I really liked both X-Men: First Class and Super 8) I sat through the dreck that is Green Lantern. Based on a storyline that is more suited for Saturday morning cartoons than a big screen production, the film had the awkward feel of a children’s made-for-TV animation that got redefined along the way to be a…Read More
