Olga Kurylenko

Russell Crowe comes out swinging with his directorial debut, the ambitious wartime melodrama, The Water Diviner. While there’s no denying the clarity of his artistic vision, the unwieldy story eventually overwhelms him. The stunning visuals and strong performances can’t overcome the film’s mismatched halves, which ping between brooding character study and simplistic actioner. Ultimately, there’s much to like about this promising debut, but it lacks the emotional wallop that Crowe intended.

Back in February, it seemed almost unfathomable that 2014 could produce a more listless spy thriller than 3 Days to Kill. Oh, for a return to those bygone days of innocence. There’s a new kid on the block and he looks a lot like the guy who used to be James Bond. Based on a popular series of ‘80’s espionage novels, The November Man feels less like an adaptation and more like the outtakes from some mediocre made-for-television movie. It’s a Frankenstein creation of re-cycled plots and villains, pieced together with lethargic pacing and turgid action sequences. Where are the invisible cars when you need them?

Erased Directed by Phillip Stölzl Written by Arash Amel USA, 2013 There’s a few distinct brands of action/thriller movie, and the most popular has always been “They Messed with the Wrong Man” (see also “Normal Guy becomes an Action Hero” and “Waaaarrrrr”) and Erased seems like an archetypal example. From the trailers and other advertisements, …

Oblivion is a science-fiction Frankenstein, stitched together with the parts of older, better, films within the genre. If you have seen the seminal sci-fi movies, the ones everyone calls to mind when considering the best the unknown and supernatural have to offer, then you will be familiar with the angles of Oblivion, its many nooks and crannies. This Tom Cruise vehicle boasts striking visuals and a weirdly claustrophobic plot structure, but the familiarity it engenders only winds up doing it harm.

Oblivion is what one might classify as an amalgamation sci-fi. Though many a contemporary feature in the genre is in clear debt to a prior work, Oblivion is one such example where the narrative similarities and likely intentional visual references cover a particularly wide array of films and literature, including La Jetée, WALL-E, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mad Max, Jin-Roh, I Am Legend, and one particular sci-fi of the past decade that simply mentioning would probably provoke likely guesses of a major plot development in one’s mind before seeing the film.

Quantum of Solace Written by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade Directed by Marc Forster UK, 2008 On the Mousterpiece Cinema podcast, Josh and I frequently joke about our “Island Films” by which we don’t mean the films that we would hypothetically take to a desert island, but the films that we are alone on an island in …

We all know about Tree of Life but Terrence Malick is already working on a new project which doesn’t have a title or a distributor.  Thanks to THR, we have the first official image from the film. The image is of Rachel McAdams and Ben Affleck. The film has been shooting in Oklahoma and has …