Friday, December 30, 2011
There's enough life in the franchise to accept this mission.
It's pretty clear what you'll get from a Mission: Impossible movie at this point. Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) IMF team will get in trouble, they'll have to break into a place that's supposedly impossible to break into and there will be gadgets and explosions galore. So, the question essentially becomes: did they change things around enough to make it worth watching? Fortunately, there's enough life in this franchise to keep it worth watching. The movie finds the IMF framed for the destruction of the Kremlin, raising international tensions. Of course, it's not their fault, but the work of a big baddie (Michael Nyquist) who wants to purge the world of... something. With Cruise as Hunt, you know what you're getting — the character is something …
Friday, December 23, 2011
Spielberg returns to the adventure genre with rousing results.
It's almost impossible to review Steven Spielberg's new film, The Adventures of Tintin, without referring to his earlier work, the Indiana Jones movies. Tintin harkens back to those films (which, in themselves, harkened back to the earliest adventure films), delivering a rousing, satisfying journey that will excite all audiences. The movie follows the adventures of a young journalist, Tintin (Jamie Bell), and his dog Snowy as they become enmeshed in a plot that involves hidden treasure, intrigue and conspiracy. The animation here is astounding. Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) travel across the world, visiting one beautiful, atmospheric locale after another. The CGI capably provides a world that's a thrill to discover, …
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Three Musketeers is practically a master's course in bad filmmaking.
The Three Musketeers is the latest (and most unnecessary) retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic story, but rather sizable liberties have been taken with the source material (I don't remember airships being mentioned in the book, but it has been a while since I've looked). The whole thing is such mess, it's hard to know where to start. The movie's tone harkens back to those bad, old '90s star vehicles (think Hudson Hawk), where directors felt it was necessary to punctuate the action with unfunny comedy. The dialogue is uniformly horrible — the characters only exist to spout ancient cliches. It is at its worst when it's trying to be witty (the movie honestly tried to foist the old "battle of wits with an unarmed man" line on its audience. In…
Friday, October 7, 2011
50/50 is a funny, yet touching, look at a guy's struggle with cancer.
50/50 takes a rather big risk in its very concept — "cancer" and "comedy" aren't topics that are typically associated. It's a risk that pays off, though — 50/50 is funny, touching and quirky all at once. The story follows Adam, a 27-year-old radio journalist, who has been diagnosed with cancer. His chances are given as "50-50," hence the film's title. In the main role is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has quietly been building a strong catalog the past few years with roles in Brick, Inception and (500) Days of Summer, among others. Gordon-Levitt gives an excellent, if restrained performance, here — his acting style gibes nicely with the role he's asked to play. His character is quiet, repressed and a little uptight, but he's able to provide …
Friday, September 30, 2011
Moneyball is entertaining, but pacing issues slow the film down.
Moneyball is perhaps the most influential book in sports history. It has ushered in a new era of player evaluation in baseball, and indeed changed the way many think of the sport. The film adaptation, starring Brad Pitt and (partially) written by Aaron Sorkin, doesn't quite revolutionize sports movies, but is an enjoyable ride nonetheless. At first glance, Moneyball looks impossible to adapt to film. It doesn't so much tell a story as track the evolution of an idea. That idea — that baseball players are judged on the wrong criteria — is certainly fascinating to the sports wonk, but how does one make it appeal to the masses? The film tackles this problem by centering around Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, and his struggles as…
Friday, September 16, 2011
Contagion is chilling, but also cold.
Contagion, the new film directed by Steven Soderburg and featuring an ensemble cast, tracks the fictional outbreak of a deadly strain of flu throughout the world. The film explores the outbreak from multiple points of view — those of a Centers for Disease Control official, a regular husband and father, a blogger, a World Health Organization doctor and others. Society slowly begins to break down as the modern world faces a pandemic the scale of which it has not seen before. The film essentially plays out as an upscale horror film — we know the what's coming long before the characters do, and the monster in this case seems to pop up everywhere. We are given long, lingering shots of everything the ailing characters touch as the film tries to …
Friday, August 12, 2011
Return to the Planet of the Apes for a solid moviegoing experience.
Prequels always start out with one strike against them. This is especially true in the case of the Planet of the Apes movies, because the ending there is one of the classics in pop culture history. In the case of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this knowledge adds a sense of foreboding throughout the film — things will come to an end, and it's going to be a bummer for the human race. Whether or not you appreciate this overarching mood is key to your enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the movie. The film finds James Franco as a medical researcher on the hunt for an Alzheimer's cure. His mission is personal, as his father (John Lithgow) is suffering through the disease. Franco's experiments eventually yield Caesar, a young ape who exhibits …
Friday, July 29, 2011
Cap turns in a well-done, if not top-tier, superhero yarn.
The comic book movie has become a staple of the summer movie-going experience, but this year's efforts have been rather blah. Warner Brothers' Green Lantern was a disaster, and Thor and X-Men: First Class were both entertaining diversions, but neither really seized the public imagination. So, does Captain America hit that top tier of comic book movies, currently defined by The Dark Knight? Not quite, but it's solidly entertaining nonetheless. For those new to the mythology, Captain America was the product of a country just about to enter World War II. He's Steve Rogers, an undersized patriot who, despite being rejected by numerous draft boards, wants desperately to contribute to the war effort. His efforts are noticed by Dr. Abraham …
