The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Directed by Matthew Vaughn
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Stardust has a problem with overconfidence. The overconfidence in the CG is one thing, but would be easily excusable if director Vaughn didn’t double down and go through tedious effects sequences. Ben Davis’s photography keeps Stardust lush, whether in the magic world or the real world–but that lushness doesn’t help with the CG. The CG…
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When the best thing in a 132-minute movie is a thirty-second cameo… it’s not a good sign. X-Men: First Class is self-important dreck. The four credited screenwriters do a bad job with everything except the one-liners; they do some of those quite well. There are a lot of goofy sixties details. Bad guy Kevin Bacon…
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Is Kick-Ass any good? Um. That question is somewhat complicated, because there are very good things about it–Chloë Grace Moretz’s fantastic as a foulmouthed twelve-year-old version of the Punisher, with some Jackie Chan thrown in, and so is “lead” Aaron Johnson, who manages not to look like he’s lost the movie he’s top-lining to every…
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I tried. I really did try. It’s absurd, in a lot of ways, to even give Layer Cake any kind of chance at all. It’s one of these hipster British crime movies. I don’t remember why I thought it might be all right–there was no empirical evidence to influence that thinking. The direction is CG…
The Stop Button 