[8] J.J. Abrams hands the reigns to director Justin Lin (director of several Fast and Furious movies), working from a script co-written by Scotty (Simon Pegg). The result? A damn solid entry in the Star Trek franchise, possibly the best of the three newest films. The plot involves your standard new bad guy (Idris Elba) trying to get his hands on a big, nasty weapon …
[8] It’s so refreshing to watch heroes and villains who are over the age of 40. Skyfall repeatedly suggests that sometimes older is better, and I couldn’t agree more. Daniel Craig’s third turn as James Bond is at least as good as his first, Casino Royale. Javier Bardem makes an excellent villain and we also get to enjoy Judi Dench in a full co-starring role …
[6] There’s no director I admire more than Peter Weir (Fearless, Mosquito Coast), even if his latest film left me a tad underwhelmed. The Way Back is about a group of men who escape a Russian labor camp during WWII and risk their lives through thousands of miles of wilderness to find their freedom in neighboring Mongolia. The cast includes Ed Harris and Colin Farrell, …
[6] Marlon Brando plays Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard takes on the mantle of the sadistic Captain Bligh in this remake from director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front). The bloated run time (three hours) doesn’t help the movie, and neither does a scarcity of closeups in the super-70mm framing. You never get into the minds of the leading characters and Brando is …
[6] This Dino DeLaurentiis production of the infamous tale of mutiny welcomes more shades of gray into the characters of Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian than the 1935 original film, though I wouldn’t say it’s a better film overall. Bligh and Christian are portrayed by Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, respectively. Bligh is a more complicated and sympathetic character; Christian is a more blindly passionate …
[5] Lex Barker ends his five-film tenure as Tarzan with a bit of a whimper in Tarzan and the She-Devil. The plot focuses around ivory poachers, lead by Raymond Burr and icy-cool Monique van Vooren, who enslave a peaceful native tribe to do all their grunt work. This installment had the potential for the greatest emotional impact, with Tarzan’s tree-top home burnt to the ground …
[7] Mel Gibson returns as the iconic Mad Max, joined by Tina Turner in a fun, villainous role. But the third film in the series is also the weakest, first signaled by the PG-13 rating, a ridiculous attempt to make a hard-edged action franchise more family-friendly. The script splits the story into two distinct parts that then converge on each other in the third act. …
[5] This belated sequel gets by, for the most part, on good will and fond memories of the previous three installments. It’s light on memorable action scenes and heavy on silliness (the CGI mokeys and gophers are really, really hard to shake). What I really wanted were more special moments between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen. I mean, who didn’t always want to see Indy …
[7] James Cameron’s first film since Titanic is a supreme juvenile fantasy with a healthy sense of adventure and discovery. From its floating mountains to its bio-luminescent flora and fauna, the world of Pandora never stops unfolding before our eyes, and it’s a beautiful, trippy little place to visit. The core concept of Avatar — that of experiencing life through a separate host body — …
[8] Director Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) delivers an emotionally compelling adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ vine-swinging legend. The first half of the movie, depicting Tarzan’s childhood up through his discovery by an Austrian explorer (Ian Holm), outshines the last, but the movie still works well overall. Christopher Lambert (Highlander) does a good job bringing out the extreme pathos of a character caught between two …
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