Drive – Drive could quite possibly be the best film visually I’ve seen since Wong Kar Wai’s 2046. From the intense opening sequence, to Ryan Gosling’s riveting performance, the haunting soundtrack that lingers in your mind, and an innocent love story that leaves you sitting there smiling as it blooms; the film screams of why I love cinema. Continue reading »
Five years ago, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) saved the world from certain destruction, but lost his wife in the process. Now, mourning the loss of her, Hunt has chosen to accept a new mission, one that again would mean certain world destruction and the start of possibly World War III in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
While on a mission in Russia infiltrating the Kremlin to obtain nuclear codes, Hunt’s mission is aborted due to another spy in the premises also seeking the codes Hunt escapes just in time before a bomb explodes, leaving high tensions between the US and Russia, since all evidence points towards him on detonating the bomb. The US President declares Ghost Protocol, or the shut down of IMF, leaving Continue reading »
Throughout the years, there are a handful of films that are made that are truly game changers. Films that not only stand the test of time, but also redefine genres and how future filmmakers hone their own craft. John Woo’s 1986 masterpiece, A Better Tomorrow is one of those films. So much of the way we see action films nowadays is because of this film. So to take a film such as this and remake it, the filmmakers have to not only love and understand the original, but also know how to make their own film and relevant to the world around them.
Hae-sung Song, and his team of six writers set out to remake this classic and not only did Woo’s original justice, but they exceeded in making the film completely fresh and Continue reading »
After a five-year hiatus, Tarsem Singh (The Cell) is back in the director’s chair to deliver us yet another visually stimulating journey in his third feature film. Immortals. Singh takes the wonderfully crafted script from the up and coming writing team of the Parlapanides brothers, Charley and Vlas, and takes us back to Ancient Greece, to a time of Western mythology when the Gods were in charge.
King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is scouring Greece to find the Epirus Bow, a weapon that could be used to unleash the Titans back onto the Earth from their prison deep within Mount Tartaros. After overtaking a Monastery and capturing Phaedra (Freida Pinto), an oracle who sees visions and can aid in finding the bow Continue reading »
Takashi Miike is one of those directors where if he makes something brilliant, it’s brilliant. If he makes something horrible, it’s torture to sit through. But then there’s films he makes, that you have no idea what to make of them, or have an inkling to the way you feel about what you’re watching. Imprint, from the Masters of Horror series, falls in the last category as I’m still pondering what it was exactly that I watched and have no real opinion on if I enjoyed it or not.
Christopher (Billy Drago) travels back to Japan in search of a woman he once fell in love with, Komomo (Michie). He chooses a girl (Youki Kudoh) who stays in the shadows due to her deformed face. She tries to please Christopher Continue reading »
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Imagine a world where money doesn’t exist, only time does. Everyday you work to earn enough money to live another day, to eat and try to enjoy life. In the ghetto’s there are gangs of time thieves who’ll rob you of the time you have left, leaving you to die in the gutter. The Time Keepers roam about keeping track of time and making sure that not too much is being spread out. On the other side of the spectrum, the rich have centuries to live and have lavish parties where they play poker with the excess time they have left. And all the while, you never grow older than twenty-five years old.
Sounds pretty cool, I know how excited I was when I saw the trailer a few months back and thought to myself what a great social commentary on Continue reading »
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After many years in anticipation, Johnny Depp reprises his role as a Hunter S. Thompson alter ego in the new film The Rum Diary, and sadly, I think he took it one film too far.
It follows a young writer, Kemp, as he travels to Puerto Rico to join a failing newspaper and begin his writing career as an astrology writer. Along the way, he drinks a lot of rum with the paper’s photographer and roommate, nearly goes to jail, meets a beautiful young blond (Amber Heard), is invited to help a shady business scheme put on by a gentleman named Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), and tries to discover his own “voice” to write his own novel.
That is all I took away as being the story from the seemingly endless two-hour marathon that is the film. Yes, it looks like there’s a lot involved, but it’s so sprawled out and Continue reading »
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Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame brings something to Hong Kong cinema that really has been missing for as long as I can remember; a mystery crime solver film. Yes, there are instances where hidden identities need to be discovered in previous films, but Detective Dee is one hundred percent a mystery crime solver set in the Tang Dynasty.
A monument is being built in honor of Empress Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), and one day two of the supervisors burst into flames for no reason. No one is sure exactly what the cause is, so the Empress free Detective Dee from prison to solve the mystery. Empress Wu sends her right hand swordswoman, Jing’er (Bingbing Li) to not only watch Dee, but to help him in his quest to find not only what Continue reading »
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Two fighters. Two brothers. One estranged ex-alcoholic father. One brother is an ex-Marine and war hero, the other is an ex fighter turned physics teacher. One brother wants to support his fallen Marine comrade’s wife, the other wants to save his house from foreclosure. In comes Spartica, the “Super Bowl” of MMA. Both men join. Both men fight through brackets, and I’m sure after reading through the fourth sentence you knew where the film was headed. It was blatantly obvious 15 minutes into the film.
This is the stripped down plot of Warrior, the new underdog sports film with one main problem…there was no underdog and no character really worth the weight of the script. Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) essentially abandoned his family twenty odd years ago due to alcoholism. He finds God and quits drinking, trying Continue reading »
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This past April the opening scene of Drive was released online for all to see and get excited about it’s release. It worked, because when the clip ended my jaw was wide open and all I could say was, “I want more.” Fast forward to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where Nicolas Winding Refn won for Best Director and the film was nominated for the Palm d’Or. It was at that moment that my excitement for the film escalated beyond just looking like an intense car chase kind of action film. Those highest of honors aren’t given to just any old action film, so I knew this was going to be a ride through cinema at it’s finest…and the film still exceeded my expectations.
What’s one of the best aspects of the film, is that it takes a very simple story and gives it an immense sense of complexity through the characters involved, with lots of the emotions never spoken out loud by any of the characters Continue reading »
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Chillerama is a new horror film anthology by four writer/directors who came together to recreate the old drive-in experience, without the fear of running your battery dry listening to the radio.
The film starts out with a guy who gets bitten by a corpse (I will not spoil this gem of an opening), and goes back to work at the drive-in for the final night before it gets torn down and turned into a strip mall. There, the man’s infected bodily fluid goes into the popcorn butter thereby turning the theatergoers into zombies. This is the main plot for the film Zom-B-Movie, that runs throughout the picture tying the other three shorts together and ends as a full blown zombie film.
Cecil Kaufman (Richard Riehle of Office Space fame) plays the drive-in owner ready to unleash three films locked away for years, one final spin Continue reading »
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Fred Andrews’ directorial debut, Creature, tries to recapture the old Universal creature from the black lagoon feel, all the while mixing it with Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Deliverance.
The film takes place in Louisiana where a group of friends go to the backwoods of the swamp. They meet some locals, one being Sid Haig, who tells them the story of local legend Grimley, a half man half crocodile who has for decades feasted on the people from the swamp area and tourists.
Of course the group decides to go and find the house where Grimley once lived as a human, which sets up typical scares of finding an abandoned cabin in the woods. Then they decide to camp close by for the night and leave in the morning Continue reading »