Pan movie review: a disaster of fantastically epic proportions
An embarrassingly empty pastiche of numerous beloved action blockbusters, all frenetic action and soulless mishmashes of fantasy imagery.
epic
2015 Sundance Film Festival Award-Winning Shorts review: the best of the best
The highlight is the absolutely astonishing “World of Tomorrow,” which crams in more SF ideas than you’ll find in a decade’s worth of summer blockbusters.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies movie review: there and back again… at last
I fear that Peter Jackson has been suffering from a similar affliction to the dwarf king’s “dragon sickness”: a compulsive lust for epicness.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I movie review: image manipulation
One of the best SF series ever deepens its critique of the power of propaganda in ways complicated, intriguingly contradictory, and a little bit horrifying.
Interstellar movie review: trading worry for wonder
Thrilling intellectually and viscerally, full of stirring notions of what humanity is capable of, and full of hope. A wonderfully refreshing sort of SF.
Mr. Turner movie review: in the concrete abstract
This is no stuffy costume drama but a richly lived-in visit to early-19th-century England that is rough, bawdy, often funny, and more often unsettling.
The Book of Life movie review: what’s a woman for?
The animation is fresh, unique, and gorgeous. But we don’t need another tale of a man having exciting adventures while a woman waits around to marry him.
Boyhood movie review: time in a cinematic bottle
An audacious coming-of-age tale unique in the history of cinema; deeply moving and beautifully authentic.
Tracks review: hopefully lost
Romantic in the grandest sense, a visceral and hypnotic experience of idealistic aspirations set against the desolate beauty and danger of the Outback.
47 Ronin review: they’re not having much fun storming the castle
A handsome movie in many ways, but it feels like an unpolished first draft, one that can’t quite decide how fantastical it wants to be.
