So Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew are back. Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his crew are back. And some new faces, Hobbs’ partner Riley (Gina Carano) and villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) dd to the franchise’s ever-growing roster. I thought the vast number of characters would be too much of a distraction...
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For a film that relies almost exclusively on dialogue (the rapport of Delpy and Hawke cannot be left aside), I’m stumbling to explain it. Hawke and Delpy play Jesse and Celine, two people who met 18 years ago, by chance, on a train from Budapest. They clicked and spent a day together, but other...
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I don’t know if it’s the strength of Fitzgerald’s novel or Luhrman’s good understanding of it, but this is a far better adaptation than I was expecting. In case you weren’t in an American high school, The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway (played here by Tobey Maguire), a bond trader moved to New York...
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The Avengers has come and gone, and now we get to see Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) dealing with the trauma he apparently experienced in New York. He has insomnia, and it strains both his work on the latest Iron Man suit as well as his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). His bodyguard Happy...
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I’m not sure whether the appropriate genre for Pain & Gain is either comedy or thriller, but I am sure that it’s a story that the cosmos made specifically for Michael Bay. There’s bulked-up dudes, strippers, midgets, stereotypical gay guys, Miami, explosions, slow-motion, and cocaine and the ’90s. Mark Wahlberg is Daniel Lugo, a...
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The opening, a long tracking shot that follows motor stuntman “Handsome” Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), as he makes his way through the carnival, lighting cigarettes, pushing through the crowd, enterting the appointed tent, fastening his helmet, and buzzing in the cage with two others, is one of the best — and will likely remain...
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It’s Jurassic Park. I still have my toy T-Rex from 1993 — and it still roars! I know pretty much all of Jeff Goldblum’s lines by heart and am working my way through memorizing Wayne Knight’s. I, like many others, am still pissed that Muldoon gets treated the way he does. Jurassic Park was...
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The first time I met Roger was in the Lake Screening Room. I had just moved to Chicago and done a few reviews at the AMC East and on Michigan and the old Kerasote. This was a guy I’d been reading all my life, writing down notes about which “Great Movies” to see, which...
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When I told my girlfriend I was off to review to the new Stephenie Meyer movie and that, having seen one of the Twilight movies, I had low expectations, she responded, “It could be worse. She could have teamed up with Nicholas Sparks.” “Good point!” I said, and then, a half hour into the...
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I had a soft spot for 2009′s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and I have a soft spot for this, even with its flaws. If you remember the end of the last film (and never mind if you didn’t), Zartan is impersonating the President of the United States in one step of Cobra...
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