Family members involved with crime go back much further in the movies than The Godfather. Conflicts between brothers go back even further than that if you take it all the way to Cain and Abel. These subjects are explored in detail in the poorly named My Brother the Devil. The glamour of easy money from […]
Gimmicks or unconventional plot conventions in movies work only as much as they are supported by the story or other major elements. The black-and-white segments of The Wizard of Oz work so well because they truly balance the rest of the story and take place in a different world. Upside Down tries something creative that […]
A soon-to-be father, not sure about his ability to handle parenting suddenly finds that he’s the biological father of 533 children in the French Canadian comedy, Starbuck. David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) is a 40-something screw-up. He can’t seem to do anything right in life. He owes loan sharks $80,000, can’t handle a simple meat delivery […]
It’s dull, flat and extremely predictable almost in an insulting fashion.
Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural story involving two main characters—Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) and Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich)—who are drawn to one another in more than the typical ways usually associated with love affairs. The supporting cast is top-notch including Jeremy Irons as Lena’s overprotective uncle, Emma Thompson as her mother, Viola Davis as the […]
I was afraid that the success of the Twilight films would lead to a rash of adaptations of other young adult supernatural series to the big screen. Hopefully, Beautiful Creatures will put an end to any plans beyond what’s already in production. This ambitious film with great production values falls flat for a number of […]
The latest Nicholas Sparks novel to be filmed is Safe Haven. It’s another romance surrounded by elements that threaten an otherwise obvious love affair. I must admit that I’m a huge fan of The Notebook which has gotten me no shortage of curious looks from various friends but I still contend it’s a great love […]
I wish that I had a winning formula for anything — perhaps video game design or writing — that would produce money at a regular rate with different versions of that same formula. Nicholas Sparks seems to have a knack for writing romantic dramas that get turned into movies starring pretty actors kissing in the rain. Some […]
World War II seems to be an endless supply of perspectives and stories that surface in books, movies and various other forms of historical records. The best of these introduce something unexpected and perhaps unsettling to the way you look at a group, location or ideology. Lore uses all of the familiar tropes of fairy […]
A teenage girl in Nazi Germany is left to look after her younger siblings in the closing months of World War II in Lore. There are few subject matters that have been the focus of more films than the Holocaust. Countless films have covered the period from virtually every conceivable perspective to the point of […]
Vampires seemed to be all the rage for a while as far as classic horror movie types. Thanks to The Walking Dead and other successful properties like the novel World War Z and the movie Zombieland, zombies have given the vampires a run for the money. Warm Bodies began life as a 2011 novel from […]
Zombie stories have been the same, more or less, from the dawn of their creation. We know zombies are dead humans infected by some apocalyptic virus leaving them in an undead state doomed to shuffle somewhat aimlessly around collapsing cities and towns forever on the lookout for one thing—brains. It’s mindless existence if it could be called […]