12 Strong movie review: America enters the “graveyard of empires”
Tense but never sensationalized action adventure about the first post–9/11 US foray into Afghanistan, an extraordinary culture clash and mashup of medieval and modern technologies.
William Fichtner
The Lone Ranger review: weak whiskey
Limp and lifeless, this overlong and undercooked would-be blockbuster cannot focus on either the hard-edged realities or the magical mysteries it toys with.
watch it: “Armadyne: Taking Mankind Into The Future” (viral for Neill Blomkamp’s ‘Elysium’)
After District 9, I will follow Neill Blomkamp anywhere…
Drive Angry 3D (review)
I’d like to call Drive Angry Ghost Rider 2: Ghost Driver, except that a sequel to Cage’s previous awful example of cinematic demonic road rage is, in fact, already in production, for our sins. I might better call it Con Air Goes to Hell, because of the beautiful — and by beautiful, I mean, of course, vile and reprehensible — way it picks up the gauntlet thrown down by that violently misogynist film and slaps that gauntlet right at the viewer. In 3D!
The Perfect Storm review: following bliss
‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it’ implies that there aren’t some people who actually enjoy doing a dirty job. As much as The Perfect Storm is an intense and terrifying man-against-nature action movie, it’s an unsentimental and uncliched drama about, as mythologist Joseph Campbell termed it, following your bliss: doing what you’re ‘made to do’ even in the face of opposition from all around you, even to the point of risking your life.
Go (review)
So, Go’s three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that’s the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that’s both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word ‘go’ both in the imperative, let’s-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for ‘come’). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.
