
Risen movie review: when habeas corpus gets weird
Initially intriguing detective tale of ancient Rome hops genres into fantasy, with a strange manic-preacher-dream-boy seduction of its pragmatic protagonist.
film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
Initially intriguing detective tale of ancient Rome hops genres into fantasy, with a strange manic-preacher-dream-boy seduction of its pragmatic protagonist.
[This post is not behind the paywall.]
Grading on the Ratner Curve, this is a positive triumph. The cheesy clichés are at least passingly entertaining. You could do worse.
I think I’m the only person who laments the failure of FlashForward, not just because it was smart science fiction drama but also for the hot FBI action we got from Joseph Fiennes: Shakespeare in what now? Just a handsome, handsome man, in a weird goofy appealing sort of way: I’m posting pictures like these … more…
I wrote recently about how the people behind Kick-Ass missed a golden opportunity to engage with fans of the film when they failed to do anything with the domain redmist.org, which features prominently in the film. Two more examples of the same mystifying failure cropped up over the past few days. Last Thursday’s installment of … more…
Damn, was I pissed when I got to the end of last week’s episode of FlashForward and saw the little notice ABC snuck in there that the show wouldn’t be returning till March. (Sci Fi Wire is mad as hell, too.) I had been figuring, all during the episode, that they were gonna hit us … more…
‘Love and a bit with a dog,’ that’s all audiences want, according to Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of London’s Rose Theater. A bit of romance, a bit of comedy — isn’t that really all that movie audiences, too, are after? Shakespeare in Love has both in spades, and it’s the first film of its kind to win Best Picture since 1977’s Annie Hall.
Tom Stoppard, I’ll grant you, is infinitely more clever and more talented than your run-of-the-mill fan-fiction writer. But he’s doing exactly the same thing as those hordes of writers who have continued and expanded upon the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise, the owner of the TARDIS, those two FBI agents down in the basement, and the fictional denizens of a zillion other cultish TV shows.