Just because the filmmakers do not trouble to work out one interesting development of character, situation, or metaphysics, is no excuse for the viewer to sit back, dull. And it is to the film's credit that there are so many teasing possibilities to pursue privately in this horror story, at …
Just because the filmmakers do not trouble to work out one interesting development of character, situation, or metaphysics, is no excuse for the viewer to sit back, dull. And it is to the film's credit that there are so many teasing possibilities to pursue privately in this horror story, at …
The movie and its publicity did their best to pretend the prior sequel never existed -- a sign of bad (or at best, conventional) taste. And odd, because this one is much less a sequel than II, despite the reappearance of Father Karras (Jason Miller) in a mental ward, an …
John Boorman's Manichean allegory of good and evil, spirit and flesh, religion and science, goes way over the head of the Exorcist original, and probably over the head of the average fright-show fan as well. It goes so far as to identify Regan MacNeil (again Linda Blair) as one of …
Backstory on how Father Merrin -- the old priest under the streetlamp -- lost his faith in a Nazi concentration camp and regained it in a confrontation with a devil's agent at an archaeological dig in Kenya. An hour-and-three-quarter afterthought, it has all the standard disadvantages of prequels: it fails …
For fans, if any, of the elliptic, cryptic style of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Adjuster). Another collection of his twisted, tormented souls (foremostly a homosexual pet-shop proprietor cum exotic-bird smuggler, a patron of a tropical-themed strip club called Exotica, an exotic dancer there who doffs her schoolgirl togs to …
Elite mercenaries Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Sylvester Stallone are joined by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, and Andy Garcia. Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are …
Adolescent action fantasy from senior citizen Sylvester Stallone: an elite team of mercenaries descend upon the stock bad guys on the mythical island of Vilena for a chopped-up orgy of carnage. The star, director, and co-writer surrounds himself with younger-generation men of action, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Randy …
Simon West hasn’t printed one watchable frame of film since setting the bar high with his debut feature, the uproarious Con Air. When it came time to reassemble the dirty half-dozen or so (plus JCVD and Chuck Norris), West’s uncolored staging was just the touch needed to give flight to …
For a little while at the outset, you may find reason to smile: Wesley Snipes is very nearly charming as a newly sprung compatriot for senior super-soldier Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone, in frequent and extended closeup). When fellow Expendable Dolph Lundgren asks what he was in for, Snipes deadpans, "Tax …
Candy is a sex worker. A poor teacher, Toto (Carlo Aquino), falls in love with her and she becomes his motivation to work hard. Directed by Jason Paul Laxamana, starring Carlo Aquino,Julia Barretto, and Quinn Carrillo.
I'm the only one here who doesn't have a past, observes the student helper of her co-workers on the dining-hall staff at a resort hotel on the Welsh coast. But by the end of summer -- the summer of '62 -- she has gotten a good start on one. The …
The title refers to Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist famous for an experiment on obedience to authority in which participants administered electric shocks to subjects who answered questions incorrectly. (Or at least, they thought they did.) But while the film does give us plenty of Milgram's life, it's the experiment …
Science-fiction juvenilia -- and wish-fulfillment stuff, to be sure, but not so much what an actual child would wish as what a protective grown-up would wish him to wish. A junior-high-school student (at Charles M. Jones Junior High, in salute to the animator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et al.) …