The Fast & the Furious franchise is nothing short of bizarre. I mean, sure, it’s mostly straightforward. Fast cars. Exotic locations. Hot women. That’s about as surefire a formula as any for successful popcorn fun, but there’s something about this particular string of movies that strikes a nerve in a way that most other action [...]
Stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, one of the great titans of fantasy cinema, died today at the age of 92. His legacy will last for as long as there are monster movies, and we would be remiss if we didn’t do our part to help commemorate his life and work. So go watch this video compilation [...]
Let’s talk numbers. Three: The number of Iron Man films that Disney outfit Marvel has produced. Seven: The number of films Marvel has released in theatres. Five: The number of films Marvel currently has in production. Two: the number of films that Shane Black has now directed. 1,000+: Movies about robots. This is where context [...]
Massive spoilers of Iron Man 3 to follow. Seriously, don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie yet. In the Marvel Comics universe, the Mandarin is Iron Man’s greatest villain — an Asian scientist and fighter who gains superpowers courtesy of ten alien rings constructed using technology far more advanced that even Tony Stark [...]
Kickboxer might be the quintessential Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. He’s got other films that are more outrageous, more action packed, more filled with ridiculous one-liners and films that are bigger in scope. But few of them seem to encapsulate so fully the things that Van Damme gravitates toward and prioritizes as an actor. It has [...]
There’s a sort of kneejerk reaction to Pain & Gain that makes you want to cast Michael Bay in a different, better light. His latest film, a longtime passion project masquerading as a true crime opus, is a prime example of the right director marrying into the right material. But Bay’s always been capable of [...]
Attempting to sum up director Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion after walking out of the screening this past Tuesday, I came up with the following equation: Wall-E + Tron: Legacy + The Matrix = Oblivion Looking around online since, I’ve seen people make similar comparisons, so I know my formula is sound. And though it wears its [...]
I’m willing to bet that, for most people, The Road Warrior – George Miller’s diesel-fueled sequel to Mad Max — was the first glimpse they’d ever gotten of the fearsome presence of Vernon Wells. That was the case for me, and it’s a performance that I can’t quite shake for a number of reasons. Wells [...]
Evil Dead, the reboot of Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror classic, isn’t the abomination you might have feared. It’s respectful and technically solid, and there are stretches where director Fede Alvarez shows he possesses some of the raw skills Raimi himself was putting to good use more than 30 years ago. But none of this makes [...]
There are, generally speaking, two kinds of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. The first kind being the ones that, while still not what one would consider a “quality film,” are still rightly entertaining and fun and have a certain flair to them. The second kind being those that are just flat-out bad, with almost nothing in [...]
Good news, people. There’s going to be a Veronica Mars movie, a continuation of the mostly great 2005-07 TV series that featured Kristen Bell as a whipcrack-smart pixie detective who solves crimes while navigating the hells of high school and later college. Though the second season was a little bit of a comedown after the [...]
Welcome to Reboot Court, where we drag an upcoming film remake in front of the judge — that would be me — and determine whether or not a do-over is a good idea. Court is now in session … The original film: Mad Max (d. George Miller, 1979) The story: In a dystopian world bled [...]
