It took a couple of viewings, but I ultimately found Salt to be the real deal when it comes to action thrillers, a most excellent assault of relentless pacing, cool stunts and ridiculous logic that not only sees star Angelina Jolie back in sexy-shooting mode, but marks a successful return to mainstream form for Australian [...]
Read More action, Angelina Jolie, blu-ray, Chiwetel Ejiofor, crime, Daniel Olybrychski, David, DVD, Kurt Wimmer, Liev Schreiber, Mystery, PG-13, Phillip Noyce, SaltSo, there I am, quietly minding my own business, providing the kind of customer service to the clientele that has my fellow employees looking upon me as some sort of titan of the industry, when I am approached by the Overseer of the Newsletter. “We need you to write a review of the Will Ferrell [...]
Read More action, blu-ray, comedy, crime, DVD, Eva Mendes, J.D., Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, PG-13, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Coogan, The Other Guys, The Rock, Will FerrellChristopher Nolan seems to be fond of magic tricks. Sure, he made a whole movie about them (The Prestige), but in his broader career he appears to relish the idea that film itself can be a playful illusion to rival any magician’s sleight-of-hand. I think his newest, the much-discussed, lauded and/or overrated Inception, is as [...]
Read More action, blu-ray, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, crime, DVD, Ellen Page, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mystery, PG-13, willAs adaptations of literary sensations go, the film version of late Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was good, not great. A bit long, maybe, but hardly the cure for insomnia that was The Da Vinci Code. Its cinematic follow-up, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is a definite step up, [...]
Read More blu-ray, crime, David, DVD, Michael Nyqvist, Mystery, Noomi Rapace, Paolo Roberto, R, Ralph Carlsson, Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire, thriller, Yasmine GarbiEdward Norton was definitely smoking something when he decided to make Leaves of Grass. You see, the oh-so-serious star of Fight Club trying to be funny is like Jim Carrey trying to be serious. It goes against nature, and the end results of their efforts are generally lacking. Such is the state of this pot [...]
Read More comedy, crime, David, drama, Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Leaves of Grass, R, thriller, Tim Blake NelsonMurder is a nasty business. Few writers have understood this as well as pulp legend Jim Thompson, whose storytelling in the 1950′s revealed a writer of rare abilities, one with genuine literary skills who was also able to illustrate the depths of human debasement without lapsing into the sort of parody which typified ‘True Detective’ [...]
Read More blu-ray, Casey Affleck, crime, drama, DVD, J.D., Jessica Alba, Jim Thompson, Kate Hudson, Michael Winterbottom, Ned Beatty, R, The Killer Inside Me, thrillerYou might be surprised to learn that you’ve very likely already seen the work of Argentine director Juan José Campanella. Most of his career for the past several years has been directing numerous episodes of American television series, among them House, MD, 30 Rock, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He has only directed [...]
Read More blu-ray, crime, Darin, drama, DVD, Guillermo Francella, Juan Jose Campanella, Mystery, R, Ricardo, romance, Soledad Villamil, The Secret In Their Eyes, willPretty people Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl may be the stars of Killers, a lackluster variation on True Lies that was released last summer to poor box office reaction, but the lone reason for seeing it turns out to be Tom Selleck. Kutcher plays a government-trained killer who gives up the life after meeting the [...]
Read More Ashton Kutcher, blu-ray, Catherine O'Hara, crime, David, drama, DVD, Katherine Heigl, Killers, R, thriller, Tom SelleckDon’t let the fancy-sounding English accents fool you. Harry Brown is a vigilante flick, pure and simple, a bleak and bloody blending of Death Wish and Gran Torino starring Michael Caine that just happens to be set in England. Caine plays an ex-serviceman living in a South London neighborhood where gangs of drug-pushing punks harass, [...]
Read More blu-ray, crime, Daniel Barber, David, drama, DVD, Harry Brown, Jack O-Connel, Michael Caine, R, thrillerIt’s grim up North. This, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of novelist David Peace, a native of Yorkshire in England, whose series of books about crime and corruption are the base for this excellent trilogy, originally broadcast on the BBC. Peace is a progenitor of pulp, and obvious student of American crime writers Jim [...]
Read More Andrew Garfield, BBC, blu-ray, crime, David Morrissey, David Peace, drama, DVD, J.D., Mark Addy, Paddy Considine, Red Riding Trilogy, Sean Bean, thriller, Tony Grisoni