Most films live up to expectations. Some utterly disappoint. Others are pleasant surprises. Kung Fu Panda falls into the latter category. There’s just no way an animated action-adventure comedy about a chubby, under-achieving panda seeking martial arts greatness should have worked. However, instead of collapsing under the weight of its own formulaic mediocrity, Kung Fu Panda offers genuine excitement and indisputable thrills. [Read more →]
Being a film critic means you have to sit through far more bad films than you do good ones. Somebody has to bravely sacrifice himself in order to save others. Still, I’m not ashamed to say that I’m a glass half full sorta guy. Although I know it is a foregone impossibility, I try to approach every film with the attitude that it is going to be a winner and I am going to be wildly, even blissfully entertained. But as optimistic as I try to be, there are some films that you know are going to be a complete waste of time. Oddly enough, these films frequently feature Adam Sandler and his unrepentantly evil sidekick, Rob Schneider. [Read more →]
What makes Christopher Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* so compelling is its bait-and-switch premise. It sets you up to believe one thing in the beginning and then spins you around to reveal a completely different conclusion by the film’s end. Bell’s summation is profound yet devilishly simple, obvious yet incessantly overlooked. He takes a subject matter that shouldn’t have the stamina to endure as a feature film — steroid use in America — and crafts from it a thoughtful, insightful and consistently entertaining documentary. [Read more →]
Sex and the City, the movie, feels like a glorified television episode in the best possible sense — utterly unchanged in spirit from its small screen roots yet just ambitious enough to validate its big screen adaptation. For the uninitiated, the film is unlikely to inspire, but for fans of the Emmy-winning HBO series, I can confidently guarantee that you will come away indisputably delighted. [Read more →]
The Strangers has no plot to speak of. It can be summed up in one word: survival. Supposedly based on a true story, the film follows the events of a single night in which James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) pay a visit to the secluded Hoyt vacation home. Playing off universal fears, the lovers discover to their horror that a trio of masked strangers has invaded the one place they feel most safe. More apparitions than human beings, now you see the strangers, now you don’t. Almost a play in that most of the action takes place in a few, confined spaces, the strangers sadistically toy with their victims the same way a cat plays with an outmatched mouse. [Read more →]
This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
The Children of Huang Shi is a bit of an odd duck for a summer release — a thoughtful, true-life historical drama tucked conspicuously into a season of explosions, guns, computer generated monsters and invincible superheroes. That it will be lost among the thunderous cacophony is a foregone conclusion. That it deserves to be is, perhaps, the only surprise. [Read more →]
If you take away nothing else from this review, please remember this: do yourself a favor and dampen your expectations. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull cannot possibly be as good as you dream it will be. Even if — especially if — every critic in the nation gushed in unbridled adoration, it still cannot stand up to the ferocity of your fevered imagination.
The truth is, the latest addition to one of the most beloved movie franchises of all time is not an abomination. But it is, unquestionably, superfluous and arguably needn’t ever have been made. [Read more →]
This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
Weird and wonderful, The Fall is nothing short of a contemporary The Wizard of Oz, a hypnotic and intoxicating tale of ravishing beauty and spellbinding imagination. [Read more →]
Why is it that so many beautiful period films are also bloodless lumps of emotionless clay? Why is it that so many directors choose to rely on their impeccable and deservedly spectacular visuals but completely ignore the fact that without engaging characters we might as well be watching a National Geographic special? Before the Rains is an exquisitely beautiful film with a sturdy story and fine performances that sputters to a stop just before the finish line, the fuel tank of our interest and concern dry as a bone. [Read more →]
When Speed Racer works, it is like nothing you have ever seen. And when it careens off the track, cartwheels end over end through the air and disintegrates upon impact with the hard, unforgiving earth, it is still like nothing you have ever seen. I’m not saying I liked the film, but I have to revere its outlandish audacity. [Read more →]