You know there’s trouble ahead when the pixels begin outnumbering the pixies. For the first 30 minutes of Joe Wright's (Anna Karenina) prequel to the J. M. Barrie classic, we follow Peter (Levi Miller) as he progresses from orphanage doorstep to flying pirate ship. Peter’s inevitable arrival at Neverland is …
Not the best film of its year to deal with the subject of magic and to feature both Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. That distinction would belong to Woody Allen's Scoop, which was unchallenged as well (except insofar as the air pressure in Jessica Biel's lips may have challenged Scarlett …
Grueling, downbeat, and ultimately indulgent thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, the former a self-reliant Christian father who decides to take an investigation into his daughter's disappearance into his own (bloody, torturous) hands, the latter a twitchy Masonic cop who's handling the case. The story is heavy on symbolism …
A promoter and his estranged son bond through robot boxing matches. Motion capture reaches new levels of sophistication, but when it comes to narrative refinement, Real Steel remains a product of cinema’s dark ages. The initial effects are enough to hold your attention, but all bets are off when the …
A waterlogged Miami (“the sunken coast”) provides a sensational special effects backdrop for this otherwise routine noir merger of Altered States and Strange Days. Stock fatalistic narration leads the way: “We don’t haunt the past, the past haunts us.” Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a tour guide of the mind, …
A waterlogged Miami (“the sunken coast”) provides a sensational special effects backdrop for this otherwise routine noir merger of Altered States and Strange Days. Stock fatalistic narration leads the way: “We don’t haunt the past, the past haunts us.” Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a tour guide of the mind, …
A companion piece to Woody Allen's Match Point only insofar as it prolongs his revitalizing sojourn in England. The half-year interval between their releases is nothing out of the ordinary for the chop-chop Woodman. Nor is the repeat appearance of Scarlett Johansson in the female lead any more remarkable than …
Desperately cute romantic comedy revolving around an unlucky-in-love career girl (Ashley Judd: is she trying to be cute, too, when she twice pronounces "realtor" as "real-a-tor"?) who develops a "New Cow Theory," whereby men are posited to be like bulls in their boredom with prior sexual partners: "neophiliacs." The heedlessly …
High fructose corn syrup is terrible for your well-being, as are cute documentaries that saccharine coat an important message. Adorable, chipmunk-toothed writer-director Damon Gameau embarked on a 60-day diet of government regulated so-called “healthy” foods, and the end result plays on like an informative, albeit Super Size Me-ish audition reel …
A deplorable high-tech, high-impact, high-explosive thriller, the opening lines of which -- "You know, the problem with Hollywood is they make shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit" -- apparently hope to summon up some preventative voodoo. Or hope at the very least to beat you to the punch. The movie at its …
The brand-name vampire hunter seen as an Indiana Jonesian swashbuckler, armed with a rapid-fire crossbow and saw-toothed boomerangs, rather than an ivory-tower savant: Hugh Jackman in gunslinger's garb rather than Peter Cushing in gentleman's get-up. What Stephen Sommers did for the Mummy, twice over, he now does for a horrific …
Credit director James Mangold and three screenwriters for trying something new with the superhero genre. Instead of a global threat that threatens the globe, the beclawed Logan must solve a Big Sleep-style mystery set in Japan. There's even a cleverish play on the world-weary detective: our nearly immortal hero is …
The strife between humans and mutants edges up to the brink: a bombastic, apocalyptic yet tensionless live-action Marvel comic, thanks (for the tensionlessness) to the anything-goes capabilities of the motley heroes. (A bullet in the brain will heal up in a jiffy.) Rebecca Romijn-Stamos rather upstages and outshines the others, …