Alex Gibney, the documentarian behind such films as Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, is a phenomenal storyteller. That’s always been true about him, but it’s especially apparent in his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (available On Demand now). Gibney neatly lays out the rise and fall of WikiLeaks and its charismatic and/or creepy founder cum figurehead, Australian hacker Julian Assange, but because he didn’t interview Assange directly (he wanted one million dollars from Gibney for an interview), Gibney relies more than ever on the elements of narrative to tell the WikiLeaks story. The end result is a documentary that is at times uneven but is always completely engrossing and fascinating, and surprisingly sensitive.Continue reading “We Steal Secrets is a compelling look at ego and honesty”
The Conjuring is pure unleaded nightmare fuel
Which is not to say it’s a 100% effective horror movie. It’s just that The Conjuring has so much scary stuff jammed in it, it’s like it was made by the people who ran the scare factory in Cabin in the Woods. Creepy kid ghosts? Check. Possessed children’s toys? Check. Chairs that rock by themselves? Check. Fucking nightmarish doll straight from Satan’s playroom? Check. CLOWNS? Check. The only thing The Conjuring is missing is a ventriloquist’s dummy and that’s probably only because someone at the studio emerged from crying under their desk long enough to make the point that the goal is to scare an audience, not outright traumatize them.Continue reading “The Conjuring is pure unleaded nightmare fuel”
Pacific Rim is the awesome(ly predictable) spectacle you’ve (seen a hundred times) been waiting for.
This is one of those reviews where I know I’m in the minority and I know everyone will disagree but I’m going to give my honest review and let the chips fall where they may. I didn’t love Pacific Rim. I went in fully expecting to—wanting to—but I didn’t, couldn’t love it. This isn’t to say I hated it. I didn’t hate it. It’s not the dumbest movie I’ve seen this summer (White House Down), or the worst (The Lone Ranger). It just wasn’t nearly good as expected, and had one of the most predictable screenplays I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe ever.Continue reading “Pacific Rim is the awesome(ly predictable) spectacle you’ve (seen a hundred times) been waiting for.”
Well The Lone Ranger sucked
I’m not surprised. I expected it to be big and dumb loud, and it is big and dumb and loud. (I did expect it to do better business, though.) What did surprise me about The Lone Ranger is that, under all the dross, there was the kernel of a good movie. At the heart of The Lone Ranger, which was the equivalent of watching a child hurl food on the floor in a fancy restaurant, was an R-rated, Tarantino-style revenge flick called Tonto that would have been awesome. Unfortunately, the movie that actually got made was Trains!: How the West Was Fun.Continue reading “Well The Lone Ranger sucked”
Joss Whedon’s DIY Shakespeare
After wrapping The Avengers in the fall of 2011, Joss Whedon, Nerd King, took a break by making a movie with his friends. In his house. Basically, Whedon threw a helluva cocktail party, had everyone speak Shakespeare, and filmed it. And the result is equal parts charming and frustrating. Charming, because it’s witty and droll and whether you’re a fan of Whedon’s previous work or not, anyone can see the genuine chemistry and real joy these actors have together. Starring a slew of Whedonites from Nathan Fillion (Castle, Firefly), Amy Acker (Cabin in the Woods, Angel), Alexis Denisof (Buffy/Angel and an unrecognizable cameo in The Avengers), Sean Maher (Firefly), Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods, Dollhouse) and Reed Diamond (Dollhouse), to more recent converts like Clark Gregg (The Avengers et al) and Jillian Morgese (pretty well cut out of The Avengers), Whedon’s weekend Shakespeare workshop looks like a lot of fun.Continue reading “Joss Whedon’s DIY Shakespeare”
Man of Steel brings Superman back from the dead
ETA: I still like this movie better than most but I’m retro-actively down-grading it. At first pass it works but upon revisiting it, it just doesn’t hold up. Henry Cavill as Clark/Superman is still spot-on casting and I still like the decisions made re: Jonathan Kent and Slightly Ambivalent Superman, but I think Zack Snyder & Co. compromised Superman’s innate hopefulness too much. Also, the length of the movie and the incoherent disaster porn of the third act render it virtually un-re-watchable. But mostly what killed this one for me is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a movie which managed to make an innately moral and good superhero interesting and complex without compromising his inherent charcteristics.
There will be SPOILERS.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Superman, thinking him boring (for many of the same reasons I find Captain America boring), but Man of Steel changed my mind. But it was a calculated risk as the things I enjoyed about a twenty-first century Superman are the things that have the Superman fanboys (and girls) unhappy with producer Christopher Nolan’s take on Clark Kent. We’ll get to that in a minute. First let’s talk about Zack Snyder’s partial redemption as a director.Continue reading “Man of Steel brings Superman back from the dead”
The Hangover is actually really dark
The Hangover Part III got crushed at the Memorial Day box office by a record-setting opening from Fast & Furious 6: Revenge of the Fast, which, I don’t care how you approach that statistic, says nothing good about our society. It was the kind of slim pickings at the cineplex that inevitably leads to someone saying, “Cinema is dying/all movies suck now”, to which I would respond that Iron Man 3 is good and still in theaters, and there is a wealth of fair-to-excellent films on offer at the arthouse. In fact, because I cannot in good faith recommend either The Hangover Part III or Fast & Furious 6: Fall of the Furious, the “What to Watch” on the home page is made up entirely of arthouse options—at least one of those movies is bound to be playing near you. (I also can’t recommend Now You See Me because it’s either not screening for critics or the screening will be pushed late so as to limit the damage early reviews can do, the schedule is still up in the air, but it’s not a good sign either way.)Continue reading “The Hangover is actually really dark”
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