In the lead-up to Transformers: The Last Knight, Craig J. Clark is mapping the road that led Michael Bay — and the rest of us — here. There’s just one catch: Craig had never seen a Michael Bay movie before now. Things are about to get real. . Part II: Sneak Attacks (2001-2005) It would be a […]
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Alec Baldwin does not like Harrison Ford. In his recently released memoir, Nevertheless, Baldwin isn’t content to merely insult the man, but deconstructs his entire image with the speed and ferocity of a prison-yard shanking. He describes Ford, Indiana Jones himself, as “a little man, short, scrawny, and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if […]
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You don’t want to read too much into these things, but after DC Comics’ bleak creative stumbles in establishing a shared movie world — the so-so Man of Steel, the bad Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the awful Suicide Squad — it turns out all they really needed was a woman’s touch. Wonder Woman finally […]
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Thanks to Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services, and with high-quality home-entertainment systems more affordable than ever, theaters have been upgrading their technology to coerce moviegoers to actually go to the movies. So the limited release of Logan in black-and-white (dubbed Logan: Noir) should come as no surprise to anyone. The central gimmick appeals to […]
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Whether Nazis, Communists, or Thuggees, Indiana Jones fights them all, and he gets his share of bruises and beatings. But just how much damage does he take in the course of his adventures? How many concussions has the great archeologist suffered while fighting the most evil of evil jerks around? We kept track. Here’s a handy movie-by-movie summary. . […]
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Of all the directors who graduated from music videos and commercial work to feature films in the 1990s — a roll call that includes such luminaries as David Fincher, Antoine Fuqua, Spike Jonze, Brett Ratner, Dominic Sena, Gore Verbinski, and Simon West — the reigning king of the summer popcorn flick has to be Michael […]
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth chapter in the apparently immortal franchise, and like most of us, it pretends part four (On Stranger Tides) never happened. But that isn’t enough to pull the series out of its tailspin. Despite the impressive special effects and spectacular visuals, though, Dead Men […]
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In 1979 director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon gave audiences the scare of a lifetime with Alien and a feminist action heroine with Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. The blue-collar woman with ‘80s curls transformed into a kick-ass action heroine, a small step for women in a landscape that’s still male-dominated. Weaver’s character hasn’t arrived […]
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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a movie that should not have worked. It’s an expensive swashbuckler based on a theme park attraction. Do you remember what the other movies based on Disney rides were around the same time? The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion. It’s a pirate movie, […]
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Movie audiences love great action, and they love it more when they care about the characters. From Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman to Batman v Superman to Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, the overpriced-popcorn-loving set rush to the local cinema to watch what goes down when two classics come together to settle the most important question mankind […]
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This year we’ll be getting seven superhero movies. Seven. For reference, that’s how many Superman movies have been made in the last 40 years. (If that seems low, fret not – two of 2017’s super-films will include the Man of Steel.) We’re living in the golden age of caped crusaders, but what brought on this […]
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To watch the Alien prequels — Prometheus (2012) and now Alien: Covenant — is to marvel at the changes in astronaut-hiring practices that must have been implemented between the earlier chapters and the later ones. The characters in Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, set in 2124, are competent spacefarers who encounter difficult situations. But the people in Prometheus (set in […]
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