I’m gonna lay it all out for you: If you watched the trailer for Hall Pass and thought ”I bet I could tell you, beat by beat, exactly how that movie’s plot is going to go”, then you are likely correct in your assumptions. Save for a some supporting cameos and a few typically-scatological set pieces, the Farrelly brothers’ latest film feels exactly like the marriages it seeks to satirize: good-natured and comfortable, but ultimately tepid and crushingly predictable.
Cigars, whiskey, sunglasses, a naked waitress straddling a clothed, but unzipped Nic Cage, the line ”I never disrobe before gunplay”, gunplay, sex, sex and gunplay and whiskey and cigars at the same time. This is the sort of thing you will find in Drive Angry , the newest film in Nic Cage's long and illustrious oeuvre, and this is just one scene.
All-Star Superman is DC's newest animated feature and drops today on Blu-ray and DVD; it follows the storyline set out by the comic book of the same name. Released between November 2005 to October 2008, All-Star Superman gave us the quintessential Superman story - there were elements from every part of his mythos, and it was all tied together by one overarching plot point: Superman is dying, and needs to come to terms with his mortality.
I'll admit I have never been a fan of Kevin Smith. I wouldn't necessarily call him a bad filmmaker; more that the worlds he creates and the characters that inhabit them have never held any interest for me. So when the teaser trailers appeared for Red State , I was intrigued. It neither looked nor sounded like a typical Smith film. And it isn't, and that is entirely in its favour. Smith has proven he can create a dark, intense film that is riveting and raw, and unabashed in its examination of the serious threat of the religious right in America.
I’ll admit I have never been a fan of Kevin Smith. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a bad filmmaker; more that the worlds he creates and the characters that inhabit them have never held any interest for me. So when the teaser trailers appeared for Red State , I was intrigued. It neither looked nor […]
Miranda July has a fascination for strangers, and how the comforts of the ordinary life perhaps become so comfortable that our reaction is to break out in rather unconventional and perhaps inadvisable ways. These themes that she explored in her first film, You and Me and Everyone We Know – the desire to find yourself through other people, and make some sort of connection – are taken to even deeper and richer heights in her new film The Future .
Jacob Tierney’s third feature film, Good Neighbours , adds a distinctly Canadian twist on a classic Hitchcock-style thriller, envisioning a cold, claustrophobic world in which no one can be either trusted or in many ways resisted. Set in 1995 during the Quebec referendum, the film spies on three Anglophone residents of an apartment block who try to find friendship merely through proximity and language.
It is always difficult to jump into the middle of an on-going story. Superhero titles by Marvel and DC are broken down into six issue arcs and there are always two ”new reader” points every year. Longer narratives, like Scalped or Fables, both amazing stories, can be nearly impossible to understand properly from just the latest weekly issue. Still, they are classic reads, and a primary reason why the trade paperback market keeps growing. Wasteland #30 was confusing at first for this novice to the title; yet, I immediately wanted to know more.
Even with the invention and proliferation of television, radio remains a relevant and fascinating medium. There are some excellent films about the power of the DJ voice, from Talk Radio to Pump Up the Volume to The Fisher King . Something about the disembodied voice allows the listener to imagine any person they choose as the owner of that voice, and twist the words to their own ideals. Sang Man Kim’s new thriller Midnight F.M. can easily be added not only to the radio film canon, but also to the slate of great thrillers being produced in recent years in South Korea.
There is a particular subgenre of kitschy horror film that comes out of countries like Spain and Italy. Usually something to do with some dark legend, a dark devil, and a group of hot young people who get caught up in the madness. Spanish director José Luis Alemán continues with his Valdemar series in La Sombra Prohibida , based on H.P. Lovecraft's work. You have the ingredients for a cult Spanish horror film, but unfortunately the film doesn’t entirely work out.
Anytime a film has Guillermo del Toro’s name attached to it, a viewer has some fairly standard and somewhat high expectations. Del Toro wrote the screenplay for and produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark , which has many of his signature tropes. This film is admittedly not up the standards of his previous work, but it is a better-than-average horror-fantasy film with a decent story and enough scares to keep it entertaining.
The highly publicized new comic from Garth Ennis and Dynamite Entertainment is a huge disappointment. The comic focuses on Jennifer, a doting but bored housewife, who is also a methodical, ruthless assassin. With her thoughts revealed via diary entries, I can only assume that we are supposed to ask ”˜Why?’ to a number of hints and questions dropped throughout, but these plot hooks are squandered by the simple fact that you don’t really become invested in Jennifer as a character.
This is the best Amazing Spider-Man issue I have read in the last four years. In my youth, I was a Spider-Man fan, but upon returning to the comic years later, I soon encountered the ”One More Day” arc ”” the story that featured the ending of Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson. I hated it. Since then, there have been few good Spidey plot lines, due mostly to revolving creative teams, stinker new villains, and marketing/publicity-driven storylines. Amazing Spider-Man #654.1 changes all that.
Greg Pak seems to have a strange talent for making me care for characters that I previously could not. He did it with Bruce Banner in Planet Hulk , and he does it again each and every time I pick up his books. His work on Hulk and Incredible Hercules is impeccable, and when I picked up the first issue of the new Silver Surfer mini-series, I hoped that magic would happen again.
DC Comics’ dynamic cover campaign strikes again! I picked up this month's issue of The Flash based entirely on the phenomenal cover by local artist Francis Manapul. I’m not entirely sure why I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the issue, but it is a great read. This reallyshouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, given the creative team involved.
