If you need an example of how not to conduct an apocalypse, look no further than “Legion.”
Among all the available options, the God in “Legion” chooses to end the world by turning small children, the elderly and people with offbeat clothes and accessories (ice cream truck drivers, guys wearing party hats, etc.) into monsters. God, [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘movies’
January 27, 2010
Legion
January 27, 2010
Daybreakers
Is it possible for a vampire movie to fly too close to the sun? “Daybreakers” does just that—it’s a stylish, ambitious melding of sci-fi and horror. When it succeeds, it does so gracefully, but when it stumbles, it nearly collapses.
“Daybreakers” promises so much: visceral vampire action, clever world building, and a thoughtful tweak on the [...]
January 27, 2010
Sherlock Holmes
Director Guy Ritchie doesn’t do anything new with Sherlock Holmes, but that’s OK. Innovation is nearly impossible to come by when you’re dealing with a 120-year-old character. As Holmes says in the novel “The Sign of the Four,” when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. And the truth is that [...]
October 18, 2009
Paranormal Activity
It took two years for “Paranormal Activity” to reach a wide audience, and in that time, the film attracted a fantastic amount of hype online. Filmed in a week in 2006 with a budget of only a few thousand dollars, first-time director Oren Peli’s film bounced around from festival to festival and studio to studio [...]
October 3, 2009
Zombieland
When it comes to shaking up the status quo and establishing new ground rules by which to live, there’s nothing more motivating than an apocalypse. And there’s no better apocalypse than a zombie apocalypse, an end-of-the-world scenario that started out as a favorite genre among horror fans and then shambled into the realm of big-budget [...]
September 29, 2009
The Informant!
From the exclamation point appended to the title to the standoffish based-on-a-true-story title card at the film’s start (it ends with “So there.”), “The Informant!” all but challenges you to believe it. Director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film is, after all, based on the true story of Mark Whitacre, a former high-ranking executive at agri-business giant [...]
August 26, 2009
Inglourious Basterds
In Philip K. Dick’s novel “The Man in the High Castle,” a chronicle of an alternate history of World War II in which the Axis won the war and Germany and Japan conquered America, there’s a great moment in which the characters glimpse, very briefly, another world (that is to say, our world) in which [...]
June 28, 2009
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is the most American movie ever. To be more specific, it’s an expensively, maybe even carefully, constructed meta-prank about America, pop-culture and other topics best left un-addressed by giant talking robots. “Revenge” can only be a goof. It must be—that it would make a boat load of money was a [...]
June 28, 2009
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
The subway is the fastest way to get around New York City, a fact that’s noted more than a few times in Tony Scott’s “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” a bland retread of the 1974 heist flick of the same name. The subway system is the city’s circulatory system and so long as [...]
May 31, 2009
Drag Me To Hell
“Drag Me To Hell” may just be the movie Sam Raimi has been waiting his whole career to make. Raimi is one of those directors who has vision to spare, with an off-kilter visual aesthetic and an expert understanding of how terror and comedy so often overlap. But he’s always been forced to make concessions, [...]
