Furiosa has very little dialogue, but her prowess and character are evident from what's presented on screen. That's the product of good acting and fine directing, neither of which exists in any Michael Bay film.
In thanks for so graciously hosting me for a week with your family, I've penned this letter to you, wrapped up in a review of "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015), in order to give you some advice regarding your future as a movie-lover.
Take the scene where Eloise, Alice and other bridesmaids hold a bachelorette party on a boat in the London river. If you’ve ever seen an unfunny comedy before, you can see the payoff coming a mile away.
It's no surprise that a film this oblivious to tone is entirely unconvincing in what should be the central romantic story between Ella and Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine). After the two meet each other for what appears to be the third time, they have a private moment at the castle in a room with
"Cinderella," a 2021 musical remake of the classic Disney story, is one of the most schizophrenic movies I have ever seen. Does it take place a long time ago in some far away land, or does it take place in modern times in a land that is a weird
Importantly, the movie doesn't get overly tied down to the original. The assembled pilots include Lieutenant Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Nick"Goose" Bradshaw who was Maverick's best friend that died during a training mission in "Top Gun." Maverick and Rooster have a difficult relationship because of this history, but director
That's because the mere existence of a sequel suggests that the original was pretty good. It's hard enough to catch a lightening in the bottle once; it's nearly impossible to do it twice.
The most effective narration is told by the mountains, whose visuals express far more than any interview. The scenes with the mountains, with Marc-André's climbing them, don't need any voiceover. The thrilling / terrifying nature of what he's doing is self-explanatory, all there on screen for you to experience.
"The Alpinist" (2021) is a documentary about a 23-year old "free soloist" named Marc-André Leclerc who climbs ice and rock alone without ropes, harnesses or any other safety precautions. In capturing the dare devil pursuits of a man obsessed with conquering mother nature's greatest challenges, this movie will
tually joins him as they walk out of the school gymnasium, through the parking lot, into an empty town, and off to their respective workplaces. This 15 minute scene between the two is a classic walk and talk. In the conversations they have with each other and anyone they come across, the audience
At the core, all movies are about storytelling. Many do this poorly and only the distinguished few do it memorably, but all films have the two components of the “story” and the “telling”.
For the most part, the "story" component gets all the attention. Audiences are always
Astonishingly, in the 30 years it took these people to come up with a story and script, they couldn't infuse much humor into their work. There is exactly one scene that elicit laughs, where a white, privileged interviewer tries to "get" the black, less-than-privileged upbringing of Lavelle. For the rest of
"Coming 2 America" (2021), a sequel to the 1988 classic "Coming to America" exclusively broadcast on Amazon Prime, is so stunningly inept that one wonders how it ever got beyond the story concept phase.
The film picks up 30 years after the original. Prince Akeem
Tom Dolan (Nielson) is an ex-U.S. Marine who's successfully pulled off several bank robberies without getting caught. One day, he goes to a storage unit facility looking for a place to store the money he stole, and meets Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh), a psychology graduate student who is an employee there.
(6/10)
It's not easy to make a good film. It's especially difficult to make a good, mindless film.
And no genre is more mindless than action.
The formula for an action flick is simple. There's a good guy (or guys or
The biggest weakness of F9, though, is in the script and character development. The central story of the film revolves around the relationship between Dom and his brother Jakob (John Cena). It spends a good chunk of time trying to develop the history of the two through flashbacks of their youths (played by Vinnie
Take the opening thirty minutes of the film. The familiar Toretto gang led by Dom (Vin Diesel) is chased by the national military of a fictitious country called Montequinto and manages to drive through landmines
Shyamalan's films have never been known for air-tight plots, but "Old" suffers from glaring holes even by his standards. Three young children turn into teenagers, then into adolescents, with visible changes to their physical looks, yet somehow they can't see the transformations in themselves. A body washes up on the beach and turns
I am a fan of writer and director M. Night Shyamalan. I like his storytelling, cinematography, pacing and mood. I am so much of a fan that I can instantly tell that a preview is that of his film by just looking at the first shot.
This movie runs as if it knows none of the gags are funny. It spends an inordinate amount of time setting up the jokes, only to rush through the payoff before quickly moving on to the next scene. It’s as if the three editors (Aaron Brock; Jon Poll; Michael Tronick) each took a
I think "Unfinished Business" (2015) is intended to be a comedy.
I make this statement based on the film's poster, which has stars Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco in ridiculous poses. I sense this must be the case, because the film places its main characters
Purportedly, there are film schools that use this movie as a case study in film-making. One can see why, because this movie's list of not-to-dos can easily fill an entire semester.
I have a personal axiom about movies, and it goes something like this: "Anyone, at any time, with enough perseverance, can make a film; only a select few, on the rarest of occasions, with a lot of luck, can make the great film."
Linklater tells this wonderful story with subtlety made possible by his artistic vision. He doesn't need a cheesy transition or an overbearing "two years later" caption. He relies on the natural aging of the actors and the events of the times, like the Iraq War, Harry Potter, Obama-McCain presidential campaign, High
Of the many things to love about "Boyhood" (2014), I most loved the sheer ambition. To create a coming-of-age movie using the same actor through his own growth filmed over 12 years is an audacious undertaking.
The fundamental issue with "Tenet" is that it saddled a baffling concept with an unnecessarily complicated story. There's Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), about whom the only thing film makes clear is that he's the villain. Then there's his wife (Elizabeth Debicki) and the fake paintings she had his estranged
The question you need to ask with a movie like "Tenet" (2020) is: for whom was this made?
Maybe it was for director and writer Christopher Nolan, who has established enough pedigree that a studio will shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for a
The original animation spent the entire film developing the friendship between the lonely Dumbo and a little mouse named Timothy Q, who helps Dumbo keep up his spirits and eventually helps him learn to fly. Dumbo's flight is the culmination of their journey together.
I sensed something was amiss early in the live-action adaptation of "Dumbo" (2019), when the film dedicates the first fifteen minutes to the manufactured tragedy of inordinate number of human characters before a single elephant makes an appearance.
If you're remotely into movies, you likely would have heard of a film called “The Room” (2003). Written, directed and starring first-time filmmaker named Tommy Wisseau, it has achieved legendary status for its hilarious ineptness. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just do a Youtube search with the keywords “the room rooftop.”
"Star Wars Episode: The Last Jedi" (2018) is stunningly bad. It’s the worst outing in the Star Wars franchise, and the race to the bottom isn’t even close.
What exactly is so bad? Let’s start at the very beginning, with the opening crawl. We are told that the evil First Order has exposed
It is 17th century Japan, a bad time and place to be a Christian. The feudal government is committed to eradicating Christianity through the torture and killing of believers, convinced that the religion is unfit for the Japanese people.
In the Portuguese colony of Macau, the Jesuits receive news that Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is living in Nagasaki, Japan, renounced his faith after being tortured.
As the title suggests, "Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016) is a sequel to "Independence Day," the 1996 blockbuster in which the United States saves the entire human race from invasion of aliens on America's Independence Day. The original had shallow characters in a predictable story with emotionally manipulative scenes and a lot of explosions. It wasn't much but at least it was a
Sequels are often criticized as not as good as the original, but they have certain natural advantages over the original. Whereas a movie generally has to spend a good fifteen to twenty minutes establishing characters and context, the sequel can dive right into the storyline because the characters have been fully developed in the original. The challenge
“Money Monster” (2016) is in trouble from the very beginning. It opens with George Clooney sitting on a bathroom stall while Julia Roberts talks to him from the other side of the door. When, only a short time later, Clooney abandons whatever dignity he had left by dancing with cheerleaders while dressing in
There is a scene in "Everest" (2015) in which magazine journalist Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) asks the several climbers he has accompanied for part of the trip why they are looking to reach the highest peak in the world.
"Because it's there!" they all answer at the same time, fully aware how humorously unsatisfying answer is.
When pressed for a more satisfactory response, Yasuko Namba (Naoko
The lesson to be learned from "Spectre" (2015), the first James Bond movie since the stellar "Skyfall" (2012), is that just bringing back the star (Daniel Craig), the director (Sam Mendes) and the screenwriters (John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) from a critically-acclaimed, commercially-successful predecessor is no guarantee that the magic can strike again.
The Mission: Impossible series is a maddeningly inconsistent franchise. It started off with “Mission: Impossible” (1996), which was well-made but had an ending which infuriated the fans of the original TV series. The franchise sank to its lowest in John Woo’s “Mission: Impossible II” (2000), which forgot what Mission: Impossible was all about, then reached its
The thing about the Jurassic Park series is that, for all the intelligence built into the concept in the original novel by author Michael Crichton, the movies, especially in the sequels, have been little more than big and small dinosaurs hunting down and eating humans who probably deserved to be eaten with all of their stupidity. The novelty of this
Here’s what it’s like watching “Terminator Genisys” (2015).
If you’ve seen the original Terminator series, the reboot/remake feels like the people who helmed this mess took the most memorable scenes from the best films, jammed those parts together with loud but shallow action sequences for half an hour, then felt the need to take the story and
“Downfall” (2004), which depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler holed up in a bunker in Berlin at the end of the European campaign of World War II, is a frightening film, although I don’t mean frightening in a horror film kind of way.
Most of us take comfort in the belief that we are not like
It’s pretty easy to see how numerous powerful people in Hollywood looking to make a quick couple million bucks thought that the concept behind “Draft Day” (2014) couldn’t miss. It’s basically “Moneyball” (2011), but with the most popular sport in America and Jennifer Garner in the place of Jonah Hill to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the NFL
"Speed" (1994) has almost everything you would want in an action film. It's got an interesting premise, a cool hero, great chemistry between the hero and the sidekicks and action scenes that literally don't stop moving. Watching it is a mindless exercise for sure, but it sure is a lot of fun.
As a movie based on a broadway musical, "Jersey Boys" (2014) avoids two traps that other movie musicals fall into: casting actors who have the name recognition but not the singing capabilities and lack of scale that puts to waste the unlimited spacial possibilities of films on screen.
The last attempt by Hollywood to adapt Godzilla into a film of its own was the equally clueless and disastrous “Godzilla” (1998), a big-budget flick that had Matthew Broderick running around New York City trying to destroy 200 eggs that a hideous-looking Godzilla laid in Madison Square Garden. With the point of comparison being so
In the world of "Gattaca" (1997), the only qualification that matters is having the right genes. It is a world in which the "responsible" parents looking to have children go to a geneticist who will weed out the "negative" genes like those linked to diseases and selectively choose the "preferred" genes like those linked to strength, intellect and
There are a lot of reasons "Lee Daniel's The Butler" (2013) fails, the most obvious being that Lee Daniels, who directed the movie, thought it proper to cast widely recognizable actors as former presidents although they have little resemblance to the presidents they are portraying. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how Robin Williams was even
Scientifically disinclined, one of my dreams growing up was not becoming an astronaut. And because I never wanted to be in space, I never wondered what it would be like to be in space. But now, thanks to "Gravity", I've been able to skip past the stage of imagination and actually experience space without ever
This is the third in the “Movie Review in Three Seconds” series of the blog. The idea is simple. In the spirit of Siskel & Ebert, I, along with one guest critic, review several movies on a scale of 1 to 10 with a short commentary that is no more than a paragraph. It’s movie
"Taken 2" is one of those sequels that has all of the ingredients of the original but none of the magic. It's as if in making the sequel, the filmmakers forgot the formula that made the original work.
I had a weird reaction as I watched "Argo" (2012). The longer the film went on, the more I became convinced that things didn't go the way that events was depicted in the movie, but also the more I enjoyed the film. It brings to mind what I always say about reality, which is that
To me, the whole idea of making a film based on a musical is ill-conceived. A musical, performed on stage, is by its nature spatially limited. A stage production can't so easily change scenes, so the song and dance routine is a way to pace the narrative while making the most out of each set
The premise of the French film "Intouchables" (2012), which is apparently based on a true story, is simply a new spin on a common story. It tells a tale of a paraplegic billionaire named Philippe who hires a caretaker named Driss. Driss has no prior experience working as a caregiver. In fact, he has neither
"Brave" (2012) is the first installment in the venerable Pixar franchise that stars a girl and involves a witch. There is something both nostalgic and cliché about this set-up, no doubt because it is a familiar backdrop of many classic films created by Disney, which purchased Pixar six years ago.
MI6 is under attack. Its security has been breached by a cyberterrorist who has exposed the British secret service's undercover operatives and has wrecked havoc in the city of London. And James Bond (Daniel Craig), who usually saves the world, must do something that hits much closer to home: to defend and save the very
"The Dark Knight Rises" (2012) marks a fitting and solid, even if not spectacular, ending to the revival of the Batman series by director Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale.
The screenwriters seriously misjudged the audience for the newest Spiderman reboot, "The Amazing Spiderman" (2012). That is the only explanation I have for a film that has a script at a teenage chick flick level.
I am not a movie snob. I am inclined to be bored with silence, dislike black and white and unimpressed with "arty" films. Despite these high odds stacked against it, I enjoyed the colorless and (almost) soundless "The Artist" (2011). I really liked it a lot.
"The Ides of March" (2011) requires an expensive buy-in. By that I mean, the film asks the audience to accept several rather implausible scenarios. The upshot is that the film is worth the price, because the pay-off is very satisfying.
"The Iron Lady" (2011) is maddeningly frustrating. You watch the movie mesmerized by the performance of the lead, yet realize, as the movie stumbles forward, that the script and the direction of the film makes it entirely forgettable if it wasn't for that performance.
I like to say that I have a favorite film in every genre, but science fiction is one category in which I don't have a film that I recommend as a "must-see." I think the reason why is science fiction is far easier to develop a premise than to wrap up the story. Once the
If there is a Japanese military officer from World War II that both Americans and Japanese respect, Adminiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy, is it. The story that looks into this reluctant warrior who opposed Japan entering the war against the United States yet planned the attack on Pearl Harbor would make
"Antoki no Inochi" (2011) is what you get when the producers, the screenwriters and the director think the audience is too shallow to appreciate the original material and conspire to dumb down the material to the point the film loses any meaning.
OHMSS is a special film in the franchise. It's got a lot of "only"s. It's the only film to have George Lazenby play James Bond. It's the only film in which Bond gets married. It's the only film in which Bond cries. It's the only film in which Bond
Considering how old the film is, this movie is surprisingly enjoyable. Yes, the pace is slow and the plot is lame, but the great moments that will go on to define James Bond and the franchise are aplenty. That shot of James Bond lighting a cigarette at a casino in his first
I've learned over the years that I shouldn't rely on movie critics to decide whether I'm going to see the film. Tastes in movies differ among people and the odds are far more likely that your friends have similar taste than a critic whom you've never met.
You'd think that at a minimum--nay, the only--criterion to
The premise of "Taken" (2009), in which Liam Neeson convincingly plays an endearing father and a ruthless retired CIA operative out for revenge, is so simple it can be summarized by a scene captured in the trailer and cited in the poster where Neeson's character says: "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want.
To be fair, I'm not a fan of musicals--or rather, musical films. So I was disappointed by "The Producers" (2005), underwhelmed by "Hairspray" (2007), and indifferent to "Grease" (1978).
But I need to neither watch a lot of musical films or understand them to know the performers in musicals require the ability to sing. I once
"Bond. James Bond."
Is it really that hard to work this immortal line into a script for a movie that lasts two hours? Or was the history of 20 films through 40 years so forgettable that all ties to the past needed to be cut?
Unlike Batman, which went through a downtur under the rudderless direction of
