It didn’t have to end this way — in such thoroughly standard smash ‘em up fashion, with minor heroes dutifully duking it out with faceless hordes for punchy-power bolt minute after punchy-power-bolt minute until the mayhem quotient has been met and the principals can finally square off for their climactic …
Another comic book movie. It's summer. School's out. What do you expect?
It didn’t have to end this way — in such thoroughly standard smash ‘em up fashion, with minor heroes dutifully duking it out with faceless hordes for punchy-power bolt minute after punchy-power-bolt minute until the mayhem quotient has been met and the principals can finally square off for their climactic …
Tim Burton’s tiresome tribute to the TV goth soaper, with Johnny Depp fully committed as the heavily made-up vampire Barnabas. Their devotion is real, but the film is a rummage of poor gags and plot fragments that add up to little. It has campy design touches, corny creep-outs, vivid women …
Aw, the folks behind Insidious and Sinister seem to have gotten away from the ol' title formula for this one. What about Malevolent? Foreboding? Malcontented? Anyway, this is a scary movie with supernatural elements.
Sophia (a steel-sharp Catherine Walker) wants to get in touch with her guardian angel — mostly because she failed to be one for her son — so she contacts a gnostic with the last name of Solomon (Steve Oram) to see what it will take in the way of expense, …
Life aboard a rocketship, twenty years in flight, looks pretty much like life in the college dorms, near the end of Winter Quarter, when boredom runs amok. These unbarbered astronauts all drift in wayward directions, dreaming of the summer surf, perusing a comic book called Falling in Love, or playing …
A Portrait of the Artist as a Very Old Man. There has always been a healthy dollop of death surrounding Swiss artist H.R. Giger, whose great (and worthy) claim to fame is the biomechanical design work he did for Ridley Scott's Alien. And mortality is very much in attendance during …
Another week, another comic book adaptation this one from the pen of Stephen King. Act fast if you want to catch it on the big screen. Given its lack of box office appeal, this one won't be around for as long as anticipated.
Bloody Sauerkraut Western about a revenge-driven loner who goes to extreme lengths to track down and brutally torture his victims. Too clever for its own sadistic good: one victim is dispatched with a spring-activated device that, when triggered, launches a board with two protruding nails in the general direction of …
Yet another American remake of a Japanese horror film, but not, please, "just another." This atmospheric ghost story is more coherent, more cohesive, more cogent, than any Ring, any Grudge, any at all. It has a palpable theme, motherhood, and an evocative visual motif, water, and these have been worked …
Todd Haynes tackles pollution.
In Utah settings, Lawrence Kasdan directs other veterans — Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, and Sam Shepard — plus a canine that seems their main interest, along with the problems of aging. Less an ’80s time capsule than a forgotten file, it mostly wanders around looking for …
If you had not already heard that the eponymous hero is an android, or that the rather unsyntactical acronym stands for Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform, you would have to wait a long time for this movie to assert itself as science fiction. Because the hero is a child, and …