The rich live highly privileged lives, in complete luxury and with access to phenomenal health care. Everyone else (the vast majority of humanity) lives in slums, dangerous places with brutal police, uncaring bureaucrats, and general misery. Oh, and it’s 150 years in the future, and all the rich people live in space. Welcome to “Elysium,” a science fiction film as low on science as it is on subtlety.
There’s a type of action movie that requires a lot of its audience. You have to suspend not just your disbelief, but also your common sense. If you’re willing to do that, it’ll give you the ride of your life – but if you’re not, you are in for an unpleasant time. “Olympus Has Fallen” is definitely this type of action movie.
Some thrillers are so convoluted that it’s almost impossible to discuss them without revealing twists and turns best left to be revealed in the watching. “Side Effects” is one such — the first act of the story can be mostly gathered from the previews and is fairly simple, but where the plot goes from there is packed with twists. In almost every way, this is a spot-on thriller, a commentary on mental illness, and a highly entertaining film.
Written and Directed by: Tommy Wirkola Starring: Gemma Arterton, Jeremy Renner, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare Rated: R for strong fantasy horror violence and gore, brief sexuality/nudity, and language There’s something ever-appealing to me about fantasy-action films. The good ones don’t take themselves seriously and are pure fun, and the bad ones are so deliciously campy that it’s hard not to love them anyway. “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” is in the first group. It’s silly almost to the point of being deranged at some points (someone explain to me how they made insulin injections in the middle ages, please), but the leads are so engaging and the story so fast-paced that it’s easy to just sit back and take the ride. The film starts with the familiar story: a man wakes his small children in the middle of the night, takes them out in the woods, and abandons them. They find a witch’s cottage, are
Anyone who sees the trailers for “Parker” and is strongly reminded of the 1999 Mel Gibson movie “Payback” is on the money — both are based on novels from the same series by Donald E. Westlake (under the pseudonym Richard Stark). They’re based on different novels, but have very similar premises: career criminal Parker (Jason Statham in this year’s flick) is double-crossed by his associates after a heist that doesn’t meet Parker’s standards. He’s left for dead, but survives and sets out to get what’s owed him. It’s a classic revenge story that, provided you’re willing to overlook a few glaring flaws, is well worth watching if you like Statham and the genre.
Directed by: Jee-woon Kim Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eduardo Noriega, Jaime Alexander, Luis Guzman, Zach Gilford, Rodrigo Santoro, Johnny Knoxville Rated: R for strong bloody violence throughout, and language It’s been eight years since we’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in any major role other than Governor of California, and he’s picked a perfect film for his comeback. “The Last Stand” is built from the same stock as the big action flicks he was making in the 80s. It’s got a simple setup, all the major tropes, and plenty of cartoonish, over-the-top gunplay. Even better, unlike a lot of recent homages to the action flicks of the 80s, it doesn’t bother trying to be gritty. This is the real deal: fun, explosions, and no thinking necessary. Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) is the sheriff of a tiny border town in Arizona called Sommersville Junction. He’s been a lawman for a long time, and when a couple of truckers show up
“Django Unchained” is, on its surface, a fairly straightforward “man is wronged and loses his woman, then meets a man who helps him achieve his quest to avenge himself and get his woman back” sort of story. It’s certainly easy to enjoy the film on that level, especially if you’re a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s violent, over-the-top style. However, there are also layers of character development, complex themes, and enough references to fill a book. This is a movie that seems destined to spawn art student theses, not just a Western set in the South.
Sometimes watching a movie is sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion, as if a child has set up a train set so that several trains will all smash into each other. “Killing Them Softly” is a movie like that. We know from the moment we meet most of the characters that they are doomed, that they are going to make bad mistakes and follow them up with more, and that the character who’s likely to come out on top is the one who makes the fewest stupid decisions.
The moment the opening credits for “The Man with the Iron Fists” start to roll, you can tell exactly what kind of movie it is. There’s an explanatory voiceover and a massive fight, paused periodically for over-saturated, old-school-style still frames for each credit — and the credits are all in both English and Chinese. By the time it got to “Quentin Tarantino Present” (sic), I was sold. This is an homage to Hong Kong action flicks and exploitation films, a blenderized rendition of every trope and camera shot we’ve seen and loved a hundred times.
The “Silent Hill” series of video games is enormously popular among a select crowd of fans – their complex mythology and survival-horror genre (meaning combat is less important than finding a way to survive long enough to escape) are very engaging to the right kind of person. The film franchise is notably less celebrated, and seems to aim for “visually impressive b-movie horror flick” rather than “quality horror movie” of any genre. The latest installment, “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” succeeds when taken on what seems like its own terms. Taken on almost any other measure of film quality, it’s a failure.