Category: 2013
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Joe Kelly has an interesting approach to his jokes. He throws a bunch out. Some of them hit, some of them don’t, but he never tries too hard. He lets Bad Dog do its own thing (which includes not recapping after a years long break between issues) and it sort of works. His characters are…
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The worst thing about Super Clyde is the blandness. For a while, it seems like Gregory Thomas Garcia can’t figure out how to make fat jokes and be sympathetic–he has to do it cheaply in the end–but there’s nothing to it. Rupert Grint is geeky in the lead. He’s a geeky red-haired twenty-something who’s weird.…
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From the opening scene–a young couple in a parking garage on the run from zombies–Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness is obviously well made. Rosenthal’s direction ably toggles between humor and gore, not to mention the gleefulness at getting to give Meaghan Lehrer comic book dialogue. Lehrer only has one lengthy dialogue delivery but she…
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Phantom tries hard not to have a narrative. On the surface, one could argue it really doesn’t–an unnamed woman and man talk. Director Soler has his actors recite their dialogue without much emotion. There are a couple really funny moments, but never do the characters seem to get tired. It is a narrative, of course–it…
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Tom & Issy is a particular brand of hideous. Now, it’s really just a music video for star Ellie Goulding–and having a successful director like Michell do a music video isn’t a big deal, it’s how they’ve concocted this “short film” slash music video. Oh, and it’s also an advertisement for Nokia phones and whatever…
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Manifest Destiny very nicely retells the story of Lewis and Clark, only with them hunting monsters in the American wilderness. Writer Chris Dingess hints at this turn of events for a little way, then reveals it full force and it’s a good reveal. Matthew Roberts’s art helps a lot. He captures the time period but…
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For the most part, it’s a strong issue. Chaykin’s gleefully overboard with this idea of Rogers as a twenties American socialist awoken around a bunch of closed-minded future “Americans.” He loves it and it’s impossible not to get wrapped up in his enthusiasm. Chaykin’s also downright hostile towards Wilma Deering. Buck lays it all out…
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Castello Cavalcanti is really precious. It’s precious at the start when–director Anderson is shooting in a studio but it’s an intricately designed street scene in fifties Italy. It’s odd it takes place in the fifties, because Jason Schwartzman’s affected performance seems more appropriate for a thirties setting. At least at the start, he gets better…
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I’m trying to imagine The Heat without Melissa McCarthy. Even though she gets second billing–the film opens introducing Sandra Bullock’s character, a superior FBI agent with no personal skills (and an odd klutziness the film never actually deals with)–McCarthy’s the only reason to watch the film and she’s the only consistently good thing in it.…
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So Call of Duty: Final Hour is some kind of video game fan short, but besides the hackneyed opening where a film strip plays in a different aspect ratio and something similar at the end, it’s just a strong little bit of filmmaking. There’s a lot of great production value–the World War II setting, there’s…
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The Last Days on Mars is nothing if not bold in what it rips off. Director Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson don’t even bother disguising the primary influences–Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Ghosts of Mars–the last one is probably coincidental. You can only do so many stories about zombies on Mars and have it be original.…
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Who knew you could spin a web series into a short movie? It’s kind of like spinning a movie off a tv show… Kind of. But the web series doesn’t matter for The Key because it’s all about build up and punch line. Oddly, writer-director Shilati doesn’t thank Kevin Smith, which he definitely should do…
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Thor: The Dark World toggles between cloying and disinterested. Between Alan Taylor’s limp direction and the tepid script, it never really has a chance. Either the world will end or it won’t. The film doesn’t waste any time getting the viewer (or even the characters) invested in caring about it. The lack of danger is…
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At a certain point during The Way, Way Back, it became clear the film was never going to do anything interesting. Then, all of a sudden, writer-directors Faxon and Rash get to their “realistic” ending–by realistic, I mean it doesn’t resolve the most important story lines–and even though the film isn’t going to reward the…
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I have only one big problem with Lonesome. Director Brubaker doesn’t do anything to the sound–the short is a number of clips, often composited on top of one another for effect. The sound often appears to be from when Brubaker recorded the footage. Towards the end, it actually worked well. But not at all towards…
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There’s something strangely likable about Rise of the Fellowship, which serves as an affectionate homage–if technical spoof as well–of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptations. Ron Newcomb’s direction isn’t original, but it’s effective, and Brian Pennington’s photography is outstanding. The film centers around four high school students who have to beat the odds to…
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Didn’t the first issue have some really mediocre or bad narration from the protagonist? Gischler doesn’t make that mistake in this issue. It’s a lot of action–actually, I think it’s nonstop action at least for the witches and their mysterious protector. Gischler goes for humor with the witches and it works. His banter between the…
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If I have to talk about Velvet in terms of good and bad, I don’t think I’ll enjoy the conversation very much. In this first issue, Ed Brubaker brings in one of his familiar tropes–the person with the secret, extraordinary past; one problem with writing a lot of comics, your standards become very, very obvious.…
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Guillermo del Toro’s dedication to his vision of Pacific Rim is absolute. He never wavers, he’s absolutely committed. Unfortunately, it’s not the vision for a good movie. Rim suffers from endless problems–except maybe the special effects. The constant CG was all competently rendered. It’s so prevalent del Toro used it to solve even the slightest…
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Given how much fun the actors have in Escape Plan, there are a couple big unfortunates. First is director Håfström; he isn’t able to direct the actors through the poorly scripted parts and he also can’t direct the one-liners. Plan is the first time Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger have ever done a buddy picture…
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Afterlife with Archie is a lot better than it should be, a lot better. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa sets up the issue beautifully–or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe in Archie comics these days Sabrina the teenage witch is a lot different than I was expecting… and maybe Betty and Veronica do act like mean girls. But even if…
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About half of The Punisher: No Mercy is effective. From the credits, it appears the fan short is a labor of love for star Shawn Baichoo–who apes Karl Urban’s voice from Dredd, which doesn’t work here. Baichoo cowrote the script and choreographed the fight scene between himself and Amber Goldfarb. The fight scene isn’t very…
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Rush ends with such a cop out, all it does is draw attention all the other cheap things Howard and writer Peter Morgan do to make the film exciting. Technically, it’s fine. Howard’s direction is good, Anthony Dod Mantle’s photography is great, Hans Zimmer’s music is fine, Morgan writes okay scenes… it’s just mundane. Howard…
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I’m going to have to talk a lot about the Lark art because there’s not much story to discuss. Except maybe how the scientist sister has the hots for the poor boy scientist she works with. Or maybe not. But it did give me another sentence and another sentence is a lot for a discussion…
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Director Villeneuve takes a very interesting approach to how a thriller works with Prisoners. He ignores it. During the first act, there are quite a few flirtations with thriller standards. But the film almost always immediately dismisses them–like Villeneuve and writer Aaron Guzikowski are holding up a standard, tossing it away. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s music helps…
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Is it or is it not post-modern mob “comedy” about gangster Robert De Niro going into witness protection and dragging his family to a quaint French town. There, wife Michelle Pfeiffer and kids Dianna Agron and John D’Leo have various crises in adjusting while De Niro contends with a pesky FBI handler (Tommy Lee Jones).…
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Now You See Me plays a little like Ocean’s Eleven without Steven Soderbergh and a great cast of supporting character actors instead of lead actors doing an ensemble. Except maybe Jesse Eisenberg. He acts like he’s running See Me, even though he’s not in it very much. And his character’s supposed to be acting like…
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It’s frightening, but once 3 Geezers! gets going, it’s an entirely watchable terrible movie. The setup, which director Michelle Schumacher doesn’t even stick with, is J.K. Simmons playing an unveiled analogue of himself, stuck doing a movie about old people written by his wife’s little brother. Michelle Schumacher is Simmons’s wife. I’m assuming writer Randle…
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Besides the incest twins playing it up like Bond villains, this issue features Rucka’s best writing on Lazarus. It kind of features Lark’s worst art on it–he really doesn’t take a lot of time with the incest twins but who would–but it’s still quite good art as it’s Lark. The issue even manages to survive…
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