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: Guardians of the Galaxy
I really liked The Avengers, but there’s something inherently a bit dry about a group of self-important goody-goody characters. It’s the problem of Superman and Captain America (and yes, I know that Superman isn’t one of the Avengers. And never shall DC and Marvel overlap at the cineplex, alas). In fact, the only character who was any sort of relief from the tone was Tony Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr), but his was…Read More
Review: Riddick
It was a decade ago that we met the mysterious, uber-tough Furyan Riddick (Vin Diesel) in the sci-fi horror film Pitch Black. Playing with the concept of what you can’t see can indeed hurt you, it was a fun start to a somewhat lackluster franchise, even as Diesel found the Fast and Furious films considerably more lucrative and likely more fun too. A few years after Pitch Black came The Chronicles of Riddick, a big budget sci-fi spectacle about bounty hunters, interplanetary invasion,…Read More