Villains are an essential part of genre cinema. Though scores of filmmakers have attempted to create truly great villains throughout the history of film, only a few have succeeded in achieving this difficult goal. Best Movie Villains 2000s The criteria for this article is the villains must be from live-action films only, and must pose …
Cymbeline is director Michael Almereyda’s second Shakespeare adaptation set in modern day, his last being 2000’s Hamlet, also starring Ethan Hawke. The Bard’s late work tragedy, previously set in the Royal Court of Olde England, receives a face-lift, updated to a war between the Roman police force and the Briton Motorcycle Club ran by Cymbeline (Ed Harris). The King trades in a crown for an Uzi and a leather jacket as a drug kingpin troubled by familial strife. His second wife (the serpentine Mila Jovovich) despises Cymbeline’s daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson, proving she has acting chops that viewers may not find in Fifty Shades of Grey), for not marrying her son, Cloten (Anton Yelchin). In secret, Imogen has pledged herself to Posthumus (Penn Badgley), much to Cymbeline’s displeasure.
Middle-aged men with a particular skillset have found their patron saint in Liam Neeson. Luckily, a distinctive visual style and some added character detailing keep Run All Night running smoother than most of its sluggish brethren. There’s certainly nothing new here, but this slick little film dispenses its thrills and kills with surprising effectiveness.
10. Waterworld Directed by: Kevin Reynolds It could be the flop of all flops. At the time, “Waterworld” was the most expensive film ever made. Starring Kevin Costner, “Waterworld” is a science-fiction/fantasy film taking place roughly 500 years after the polar ice caps melted in the beginning of the 21st century, effectively covering the entire …
A year ago this week it was announced that Jonathan Nolan will act as showrunner and writer alongside Lisa Joy on a new HBO series based on Michael Crichton’s book and cult classic film Westworld. Busiest man in the world J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot cohorts Bryan Burk and Jerry Weintraub will also produce …
South Korean filmmaker, Joon-ho Bong, has never been afraid of mixing genres. In his latest and most challenging film to date, Snowpiercer, Bong mixes action, sci-fi and satire to create a delightfully twisted prison break story. Snowpiercer owes much of its effectiveness to an ingenious script that uses 3 discrete acts to effortlessly shift its …
Much like what it portrays, with the war movie there is always a thin line between success and failure. There will always be those that fail to hit the target when victory was so surely within reach. Intention is undermined by incompetence.
High concept is always a tricky beast. By its very nature, it always threatens to completely overshadow its own efforts and render the effort to capture the wonder of an emphatic hypothetical question rather academic. The query pondered by Peter Weir’s 1998 satire The Truman Show was one that any viewer can appreciate; ‘What if every moment of your life was being televised for the entertainment of the masses?’
2005, judging by the theatrical releases, was an exceptional year for the neonoir sub-genre. Last summer, for the special Friday (neo)Noir series, reviews for Rian Johnson’s breakout independent hit Brick and Robert Rodriguez’s cinematic visualization of Sin City, both from 2005, were written. A couple of weeks ago another neonoir from the same year was put under the microscope, Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This week features, yes, still another entry from that illustrious year, one from the most lauded director of the bunch, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.
If cinema has anything to say about it, the modern American dream is best typified by a grandiose level of entitlement in those who covet it most of all. Just a month ago, we saw Spring Breakers, a nightmarish, neon piece of grotesquerie, compelling experimental art about nubile young women trying to attain their hedonistic Western utopia by stealing from and killing people who dared get in their way, consequences be damned.
Click here to access part 1 In part 1 of this somewhat elongated discussion of the characters inhabiting the world of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, we delved, as best we could, into what made each of the three protagonists tick, Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett). We then …
On this week’s Mousterpiece Cinema, Josh and Mike are joined by special guest Casey Ryan to tackle not one, but two movies. Yes, they shoved a discussion of the 2004 adventure film National Treasure along with its 2007 sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets into one jam-packed episode. The double-movie package may be a blessing …
National Treasure Directed by Jon Turteltaub Written by Jim Kouf, Cormac Wibberley, and Marianne Wibberley Starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight National Treasure: Book of Secrets Directed by Jon Turteltaub Written by Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley Starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Ed Harris, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren …
Man on a Ledge Directed by Asger Leth Written by Pablo F. Fenjves U.S.A, 2012 It feels safe to assume that ensemble pieces are rarely an easy proposition. The matter of juggling good writing and proper screen time between a great number of solid characters requires some highly regarded skill, both from the standpoints of …
Warning: spoilers for The Adjustment Bureau (and all the other films discussed) follow. The Adjustment Bureau may have been marketed with the line ‘Bourne meets Inception’ (which it attributes to Total Film, though I can’t find this line in Jonathan Crocker’s review) but it’s a softer, sweeter film than that comparison suggests. And although it …
The Way Back Directed by Peter Weir Written by Peter Weir and Keith R. Clarke USA, 2010 An old-school period epic in every sense of the idea, Peter Weir’s first film since 2003’s Master and Commander is a similarly pared-down, male-dominated tale of survival and strength of will, albeit tinged this time around with a …