Don’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 [...]
Friday 03 Sep 2010 |
blogadmin |
drama, foreign films, movie reviews
It’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 [...]
Friday 03 Sep 2010 |
blogadmin |
drama, movie reviews, recommendations, suspense/thrillers
As a movie, The Square, a low-budget Australian thriller produced sometime in 2008, is far less energetic than its DVD preview would have you believe, but is saved by a first-rate script that renders it reminiscent of the best noir flicks.
Friday 27 Aug 2010 |
blogadmin |
drama, movie reviews, suspense/thrillers
Goodness, the British certainly do hate Tony Blair…
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
There have been any number of political thrillers released in the last few years, the culmination of the ‘lost years’ of America, where the Bush administration, and its allies in England, have come in for a right kicking over [...]
Friday 06 Aug 2010 |
blogadmin |
blu-ray, drama, movie reviews, recommendations, suspense/thrillers
When choosing a graphic novel to adapt into a screenplay, one must choose wisely. The effects of choosing a novel too complex or dry has often shown its rougher side (I’m speaking of films a la The Hulk, Fantastic Four, and Punisher War Zone). Kick-Ass has a simple plot that, though it may [...]
Friday 06 Aug 2010 |
blogadmin |
action/adventure, blu-ray, movie reviews, recommendations, suspense/thrillers
Under no circumstances should you confuse Repo Men with Repo Man. Sure, they both feature fair-haired actors whose characters repossess things for a living. But one is a fun cult flick from the ‘80s with Emilio Estevez. The one I’m reviewing here is a stale and somewhat repugnant sci-fi concoction starring Jude Law.
In [...]
Friday 30 Jul 2010 |
blogadmin |
action/adventure, movie reviews, sci-fi / fantasy
I wrote up Atom Egoyan’s last effort, Adoration. I thought it was a strong return to his previous cinematic achievements like The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica. I neglected to mention the movies that had come in between like Felicia’s Journey, Ararat, and Where the Truth Lies. This omission is [...]
Friday 16 Jul 2010 |
blogadmin |
blu-ray, drama, movie reviews, suspense/thrillers
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a film that I was completely oblivious of. So in other words, I went into this film blindly. What this film presented was a surprisingly interesting plot that often reminded me of films such as Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia. The visualization of pain and [...]
Friday 16 Jul 2010 |
blogadmin |
blu-ray, foreign films, movie reviews, recommendations, suspense/thrillers
The most recent film from action director Antoine Fuqua, Brooklyn’s Finest is the story of three seemingly unconnected cops walking the Brooklyn beat. Ethan Hawke plays a detective with money problems, namely buying a house for his pregnant wife and apparently unending stream of children. Don Cheadle plays an undercover drug [...]
Friday 09 Jul 2010 |
blogadmin |
action/adventure, drama, movie reviews
Something in an Iowa farming community’s water is turning the townsfolk into homicidal maniacs. So goes the scenario of director Breck Eisner’s effectively frightening redo of George Romero’s 1973 virus-run-amuck classic The Crazies.
Thursday 01 Jul 2010 |
blogadmin |
blu-ray, movie reviews, suspense/thrillers