John Hillcoat’s (Lawless, The Proposition) The Road is the best film adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Yes, I know that this means I preferred The Road over 2007’s Academy Award-winning Best Picture No Country For Old Men. The Road is a good adaptation of McCarthy’s novel, though not a great one. The novel, with the same name, presents a desolate 2929 America where nomadic tribes scour the earth, looking for any signs of life that would allow them to sustain existence. With the animals and vegetation extinct, cannibalism is alive and prevalent, though the number of people inhabiting the earth dwindles yearly.
Continue reading The Road (2009)
Category Archives: Science Fiction
Elysium (2013)
The best summer movie of 2013? I’m divided between World War Z and Elysium. Let me preface this by saying I have seen fewer movies in the theater this summer than in any summer in recent memory, but that was by choice, not the options for movies. I’ve been concentrating on other writing avenues and have taken a break from my blog. I’ve seen a few movies this summer that I probably will not review, but I’m committed to reviewing movies that will end up in my end-of-year top 10. Even with all the amazing movies this fall, I don’t see a scenario where Elysium or World War Z finish outside the top 10. I’ll venture to say they will finish in the top five.
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Iron Man 3 (2013)
So continues other comic book franchise on the big screen. The norm these days is if a movie can make $150 million domestically, sequel after sequel will continue to be made. I understand that. It makes sense. However, it doesn’t mean I have to continue supporting the franchise even if I consider the first movie in the series awesome. I usually give the series the benefit of the doubt if I like the first one. While I loved Iron Man, Iron Man 2 could have been better. There wasn’t the same kind of wow factor. It was still an ok superhero movie, but I never felt like what I watched was anything special. Such is the case with Iron Man 3. It is a very entertaining movie, but as will be the case with the almost certain Iron Man 4, Iron Man 5, etc., that unique originality feature that comes with every first movie in a series will be eliminated. So while I appreciate that attempts to make Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, etc., entertaining movies, I won’t have much feeling other than been there/done that. I expect I will like each new film in the series a little less than the preview. That has certainly been the case thus far.
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The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Many critics and audiences agree that the Andrew Garfield-led (The Social Network, Never Let Me Go) reboot of Spider-Man occurred too soon after the completion of the Toby Maguire trilogy. Because it was a given that the reboot would generate hundreds of millions of dollars on name alone, many wondered how strong of an effort there would be to tell a great story. On the other hand, an uninteresting story and poor reviews from the critics that still resulted in $200 million would have devastated superhero movies. Heck, Ryan Reynolds’ disaster The Green Lantern earned a measly 27% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and still made $116 million at the box office. Fortunately, while there were many parallels to the Tobey franchise, this movie was much darker. This was my number one criterion going in. I just wanted it to be more adult-oriented. Some thought it was too dark, saying things like Spider-Man isn’t Batman, but as a guy in his mid-30s, I’d rather see any PG-13/R type superhero movie over a PG/PG-13 type one.Limitless (2011)
Bradley Cooper, you have a new fan. In the first blockbuster movie of your career that you were asked to carry, you knocked Limitless out of the park. So no longer will I reference you as “one of the guys from The Hangover.” After looking at your filmography, I’ll be the first to tell you that you’ve made terrible career choices, but maybe you were getting your feet wet. Maybe at the ripe age of 34, after eight years of meaningless roles in some of the awful movies of the last decade, including Failure to Launch, Valentine’s Day, Yes Man, Case 39, The A-Team, He’s Just Not That Into You, and, perhaps the cream of the crop, All About Steve, you’ll finally be recognized for what you potentially could bring to a movie. When I first saw the trailer for Limitless, I thought there would be no chance I would see it. But after reading some reviews about it, I added it to my Netflix queue and slowly watched it work to the top of my list.
Continue reading Limitless (2011)