Josh Brolin

It’s worth an afternoon at the IMAX theater to take in the sights on ‘Everest,’ but don’t expect any new insight into this harrowing tragedy.

Hugh Jackman has played Logan aka Wolverine in seven different films. It’s an impressive number that will shortly increase with a third solo Wolverine film and possibly X-Men:Apocalypse, although at the time of writing he has yet to be officially cast. A few other names are snapping at the heels of Jackman, notably the cast …

It’s not just that Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies tend to defy any one genre description; it’s that, often, it seems as if the writer-director is trying to play with many genres simultaneously. The only reason that Boogie Nights isn’t the best drama of the 1990s is that it spends a lot of time trying to be the best comedy of the 1990s instead. So Anderson’s newest, Inherent Vice, is a departure in that it mostly sticks to one style (sun-drenched film noir) and one tone (absurdist comedy). It’s also a fine film, which suffers only when measured against the insanely high standard that Anderson’s past work has set.

Even if you were not around during the 1970s, Inherent Vice comes across as a faded, nostalgic memory. Being a faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, the film recounts the dying days of the free love era, laced with the look, feel and paraphernalia of the subculture. Anderson’s comedic thriller peppers itself with restless, almost out of place laughter, while dedicating itself to the themes of the early Seventies. One is reminded of private-eye classics such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with traces of Zucker-Abrahams comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. For many, the homage to 1970s filmmaking will be a very real and thrilling look down memory lane. For others, it’ll be a history lesson like no other found in modern day filmmaking.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Written by Frank Miller Directed by Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller USA, 2014   When Sin City exploded into theaters in 2005, we had never seen anything like it.  It was a resounding declaration that digital filmmaking had finally arrived.  The new Robert Rodriquez-Frank Miller collaboration, Sin City: …

Of course, Guardians isn’t perfect, as it struggles to find a consistent tone. Sometimes it wants to be more adult, with bawdier language and sexual innuendo. For instance, Quill’s rumination that “If I had a black light, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting!” is pretty sophisticated for mainstream PG-13 fare. Other times, it feels as though the filmmakers are pandering to a much younger audience. You can almost visualize a ‘Dancing Groot’ doll gyrating in your kid’s Happy Meal.

For every good sequence, there’s one that’s muddled with bad camerawork and editing. Like a lot of blockbuster action, it’s barely legible; you have to work to keep up with it, and that work interferes with the enjoyment. The story also sags in the middle, as it seems to exist mainly to fill out the run-time. The protagonists take the MacGuffin to a dude they wish to sell it to, but the only real function of the section is to exposit what it is. It turns a big chunk of the plot into a shrug.

Labor Day Written and directed by Jason Reitman USA, 2013 It’s all too fitting that, at one point midway through Labor Day, two of the lead characters are sitting in front of a TV, watching a network broadcast of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This film’s writer-director, Jason Reitman, no …

Labor Day is far darker and perilous than writer/director Jason Reitman’s previous fare. Illness, broken hearts, and tragedy take center stage. Characters are not coddled and nothing feels ironic. Judging from this outing, drama may suit Reitman better than the snappy, sardonic exchanges we’ve gotten used to from him. Kate Winslet plays Adele, a woman long ago drained of love for the world, raising a son that wants to believe that a pure, transformative and truly supportive love exists for his mother. Into their lives enters Frank (Josh Brolin), an escaped convict who takes them hostage and back to their home to wait out the heat from the cops. Brought together by circumstance, what develops between the three of them is something surprising, rich, and strange.

Gangster Squad Directed by Ruben Fleischer Written by Will Beall USA, 2013 At some point, an excess of style only serves to emphasize the hollowness of a story. A director like Martin Scorsese knows how to weave a sprawling tale of vice and amorality while juicing up the proceedings with verve and panache. On the …

  A chronicle of the LAPD’s fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s. Directed by Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer, and written by Castle staff writer Will Beall, based on the book by Paul Lieberman

Men in Black 3 Written by Etan Cohen Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld USA, 2012 Though it’s merely a somewhat unnecessary echo of the 1997 original, Men in Black 3 manages to be moderately entertaining. After a four-year hiatus from the big screen, Will Smith returns as Agent J of the MIB extraterrestrial task force, trying …

The news must have had every paid up member of the Conservative Party choking on their breakfast cup of tea. In a thousand Home Counties bungalows, men called Jeremy or Brian must have reached for their writing paper and fountain pens to compose a strongly worded letter to the Telegraph. The reason behind their outrage …

“The Coens once again demonstrate why they are among the very few American filmmakers worth anticipating and they hardly disappoint”. True Grit (2010) Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen Cast: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon If in some way, No Country for Old Men was about an innocence lost that never …