For the first half of ‘Fantastic Four’ you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to start?” For the second half you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to end?!?” It’s not an awful movie, it’s just unrelentingly bland.
The Fantastic Four are the first family of Marvel Comics. Created in 1961 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (apocryphally, the result of an edict by Marvel publisher Martin Goodman to tryout a superhero team, a la rival DC Comic’s super-successful Justice League) and heavily inspired by the monster comics Marvel was publishing at the time, their tremendous popularity and success is responsible for launching Marvel’s Silver Age superhero renaissance, transforming a middling publisher of romance and sci-fi comics into one of the “Big Two” publishers of superhero adventure stories, leading to the creation of some of pop culture’s most enduring and beloved characters. Without the Fantastic Four, there would arguably be no Spider-Man, no Hulk, no X-Men or Avengers. Fantastic Four #1 is, simply, the Big Bang of Marvel Comics.
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 …
Adapted from an Irvine Welsh novel of the same name, Filth will be a frustrating watch for those familiar with the work, and a confusing watch for those without bias.
Though infused with an infectious anarchic energy, Filth confuses rudeness with rebellion. Even the gleeful excesses can’t save the film’s muddled script as it loses its narrative steam and plummets into melodrama. The wickedness feels less like provocation and more like a diversion to hide the wafer-thin story. In other words, Filth is all talk and no shock.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn Written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish Directed by Steven Spielberg USA/New Zealand, 2011 A point of controversy regarding Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin is the issue of whether or not, due to its heavy motion capture leanings, one should classify it as an …
Retreat Directed by Carl Tibbetts Written by Janice Hallett & Carl Tibbetts UK, 2011 Retreat might not be a perfect film, but it is a well-constructed and closely observed claustrophobic thriller that continually teases its audience to uncover the truth behind all the madness. Both psychologically frightening and maddening to the senses, Retreat is a …