Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Thursday, March 20th, 2025
When I was doing my reviews leading up to the Oscars I thought about watching CENTER STAGE, the ballet movie that was the big screen debut of Zoe Saldaña, who ended up winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for EMILIA PÉREZ (where she also danced). But I decided not to rush it because I knew myself and that I would end up wanting to watch both of its straight-to-cable sequels. Now I have done that and I present to you my review of the entire CENTER STAGE trilogy.
CENTER STAGE (2000)
Directed by Nicholas Hytner (THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE)
Written by Carol Heikkinen (EMPIRE RECORDS)
Choreographer: Susan Stroman (Director/choreographer of THE PRODUCERS [2005])
The first CENTER STAGE picture introduces us to the American Ballet Academy, an elite (fictional) New York City ballet school run by revered stick-up-his-ass choreographer/director Jonathan Reeves (Peter Gallagher, SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE), who turns each year into a cutthroat competition between the students. Their education culminates in their performances in workshops that will help the faculty decide which three boys and three girls will be invited to join Jonathan’s very prestigious American Ballet Company. From the speech he gives on day one it kind of sounds like this school will be the golden ticket to dance stardom for a handful of students, and a miserable, torturous waste of time, energy and money for everybody else. Most of them. Almost all of them. And they should all be ashamed of themselves. Okay, good talk! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Schull, ballet, Chloe Lukasiak, Christopher Russell, dance movies, Director X, Ethan Stiefel, Harry Shum Jr., Karen Bloch Morse, Kenny Wormald, made-for-TV-sequels, Maude Green, Nicholas Hytner, Nicole Munoz, Nisha Ganatra, Odessa Munroe, Rachele Brooke Smith, Sarah Jayne Jensen, Sarah-Jane Redmond, Shakiem Evans, Steven Jacobson, Susan May Pratt, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 19th, 2025
BLACK BAG is the latest-latest from prolific retiree Steven Soderbergh. I’m mad at myself that I didn’t see his ghost movie PRESENCE in theaters last month, so I wasn’t gonna miss this. It’s one of his clever, expertly-executed genre exercises, this time reinventing the spy movie. The novelty is that it works completely as an exciting espionage thriller, with betrayals, murder, interrogations, trickery, etc., but done on a small scale, in a mere 2 (two) countries, centering around two dinner party scenes. And that flows naturally out of the fact that the main characters are a happily married couple. (And that it’s not about either of them being kidnapped.)
There is an issue, though. When George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender, JONAH HEX) is handed a list of five agents who may have stolen a top secret software called Severus, the list is made up of two couples he knows and his wife Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchettt, HANNA). He has one week to identify the traitor, and he begins his investigation by inviting the suspects all over for dinner and getting them talking. (The channa masala is drugged.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cate Blanchett, David Holmes, David Koepp, Gustaf Skarsgard, Marisa Abela, Michael Fassbender, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, Rege-Jean Page, spies, Steven Soderbergh, Tom Burke
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, March 18th, 2025
ZEIRAM is a goofy but entertaining Japanese sci-fi movie from 1991. I always thought it was based on an anime or manga, but now I’ve learned that the six episodes of Iria: Zeiram the Animation were a tie-in that came out the same year, like CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY or VAN HELSING: THE LONDON ASSIGNMENT. But obviously there is some anime influence going on with some of the futuristic armor and weird creatures and stuff, which are given more consideration than the plot, so it might as well be a live action anime adaptation.
Zeiram (Mizuho Yoshida, who later played Gojira in GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK) is the name of a villainous alien on a rampage. He looks like a guy with a Boushh-style slit mask and a wide brimmed hat. The hat has a little kabuki-white face on the front that sometimes looks like a doll head, but in closeup appears to be a living person. Sometimes it extends on a long wormy neck. Eventually it’s revealed that he’s a “forbidden biological weapon,” and the “hat” is actually Zeiram, the rest is a biomechanical attachment. He’s basically a manta ray driving a mech! Spoiler. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Japanese sci-fi, Keita Amemiya, Kunihiro Ida, Mizuho Yoshida, Yukijiro Hotaru, Yuko Moriyama
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Monday, March 17th, 2025
DIRTY ANGELS is not the newest Martin Campbell joint – that’s CLEANER starring Daisy Ridley – but the one from 2024, now on DVD in Canada. I don’t exactly know the events that shifted Mr. Campbell from A-lister who kicked off the last two eras of 007 and did the motherfuckin MASK OF ZORRO to journeyman in the trenches making barely released, mostly generic but pretty cool female-driven action movies, but I’m not gonna knock it. There are many worse trajectories to take in life.
This one is Afghanistan War Movie #562 (set as the war is ending, like most of them now), but the female stars and commando nature of the conflict do make it stand out a little. You have your vicious terrorist leader (George Iskandar), local contacts and lack of trust, but there are no raids on houses, it’s low on desert, and it’s about rescuing hostages ISIS abducted from an all girls school in Pakistan. Can’t object to that cause. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Afghanistan War, Alissa Sullivan Haggis, Aziz Capkurt, Christopher Backus, Edmund Kingsley, Emily Bruni, Esti Yerushalmi, Eva Green, Gene Quintano, Jojo T. Gibbs, Jonas McCord, Laetitia Eido, Maria Bakalova, Martin Campbell, Reza Brojerdi, Rona-Lee Shimon, Ruby Rose
Posted in Reviews, Action | 4 Comments »
Thursday, March 13th, 2025
SING SING is an unusual movie with a simple appeal: it’s about a theater program in a prison, and most of the cast is made up of actual graduates of the program playing versions of themselves, so there’s an unmistakable feeling of authenticity completely outside of a normal Hollywood production. We see interjections of unscripted or documentary scenes – auditions, video of real plays – but mostly we just see very natural performances by actors/characters speaking or drawing from their hearts in ways that cut deep.
One of the familiar actors in the movie is Paul Raci (DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY) as the director, Brent, a mentor character similar to his Oscar nominated one in SOUND OF METAL. I forgot exactly what Raci’s background was and fell for the illusion that he was pretty much a real guy going into social worker mode. There’s a scene where as an acting exercise they close their eyes and imagine their happiest place, then they go around the circle and describe what they thought about. They’re all talking about their childhood or about being with their kids or about the pain of their lives in isolation. When Brent notes that men don’t usually get to be emotionally vulnerable like this it could be a scripted line, but it doesn’t feel like one, it feels like just honestly running the exercise and appreciating how it goes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Brent Buell, Clarence Maclin, Clint Bentley, Colman Domingo, Greg Kwedar, John H. Richardson, Paul Raci, prison, Sean San Jose
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2025
This is just me but when I found out there was
1) a new Milla Jovovich picture directed by her partner in life and filmmaking Paul Warm Sweater Anderson that
2) co-stars Dave Bautista and
(bonus points) is a post-apocalyptic western fantasy, I transported myself to the next matinee. It’s called IN THE LOST LANDS and the advertising hook (to the extent that they’re advertising it) is that it’s based on a short story by Game of Thrones creator George Ruff Ryders Martin. So it’s worth watching for the middle initials alone.
It takes place in the far future, after a nuclear war. Much of the earth is now “The Lost Lands,” where people don’t generally go on account of monsters ’n shit. Most humans live in one tall but small city built around a cool skull face, sometimes but not always speaking in florid language. It’s a monarchy ruled by a Queen (Amara Okereke) and I guess her husband the Overlord (Jacek Dzisewicz), but he’s bedridden, and anyway the real power seems to be a Christian order who make giant crosses out of machinery and spread the word of Jesus by terrorizing and behaving in ways that could not possibly be further from anything that dude ever represented. So, pretty similar to what we’re dealing with now. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arly Jover, Dave Bautista, George R.R. Martin, Milla Jovovich, Paul Haslinger, Paul W.S. Anderson, post-apocalypse, Simon Loof, witches
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Western | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025
SON OF GODZILLA (1967) is Godzilla picture #8, coming one year and one day after EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP and from the same director, Jun Fukuda and same writer Shinichi Sekizawa, this time with co-writer Kazue Shiba, whose only other credit is a war movie called ZERO FIGHTERS. Masaru Sato also returns as composer, with some goofily upbeat themes to represent the title character.
When I reviewed EBIRAH I learned that it was set on an island so they could build fewer models and save money. This one continues that trend but seems even more economical, without any city scenes at all. The only man-made structures are a science lab built on remote Sollgel Island. Sometimes they’d cut to a shot of a tower and I’d think I was watching Thunderbirds. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akira Kubo, Bibari Maeda, Godzilla, Jun Fukuda, kaiju, Shinichi Sekizawa
Posted in Reviews, Monster | 12 Comments »
Monday, March 10th, 2025
LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS is the unwieldily titled new Tsui Hark joint, which I was grateful to be able to see in a theater. (This puts my lifetime Tsui Hark theatrical screenings at four, after DOUBLE TEAM, KNOCK OFF and FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE 3D IMAX). Based on a famous story by Jin Yong (whose books also inspired the SWORDSMAN trilogy), it’s the type of thing I hope for from Tsui these days: a wild and extravagant wuxia epic, expertly put together at a swaggering blockbuster scale. A great time at the movies.
It opens with narration by a guy talking about witnessing many famous battles of Genghis Khan (Baya’ertu, CREATION OF THE GODS I: KINGDOM OF STORMS) and the Mongol army. As you watch these enormous conflicts on screen you wonder how the fuck a guy was witnessing it without getting chopped to bits, and then you find out: he was perched above on a cliff. When the Mongols spot him they shoot arrows at him, but he seems to repel them with some sort of energy shield trick. Okay, good, we got a real one here. This is our protagonist Guo Jing (Xiao Zhan, THE ROOKIES), a martial artist who aspires to greatness and has an interestingly convoluted backstory. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ada Choi, Alan Aruna, Baya'ertu, Hu Jun, Jin Yong, Tony Leung Kai-fai, Tsui Hark, Xiao Zhan, Zhang Wenxin, Zhuang Dafei
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 5 Comments »
Thursday, March 6th, 2025
THE VOURDALAK is a 2023 French vampire film that’s pretty simple and classical but it has this one fucking fantastic choice that jumps out at you: the vampire is portrayed by a puppet. Not a muppet, but a human sized rod puppet or something that kinda looks like how Hellboy‘s Mike Mignola draws desiccated corpses. He’s a spindly nosferatu type but he’s in his ‘80s so he tries to act like that’s all it is. No, hey guys, I’m fine. I didn’t become a vourdalak (type of vampire from Slavic folk tales) during that dangerous trip where I told you if I return after six days I’m a vourdalak. I just look this way ’cause I’m old.
The protagonist is a goofy dork and diplomatic envoy for the king of France named Marquis Jacques Saturnin d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein, GAINSBOURG: A HEROIC LIFE). I love how he’s unseen in the opening sequence, seeking shelter after losing his horse and companions during a robbery. He’s being turned away from shelter through the barred window on a door, but every time lightning strikes we see the shadow of his big ol’ historical-French-guy hat.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.K. Tolstoy, Adrien Beau, Ariane Labed, Claire Duburcq, French horror, Gregoire Colin, Hadrien Bouvier, Kacey Mottet Klein, puppets, vampires, Vassili Schneider
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2025
THE ORDER (2024) is a gritty, not too showy but completely riveting true crime movie about neo-nazi bank robbers in the Pacific Northwest, circa 1983. The protagonist is an FBI agent, but one of his specialties is going after bigots, and I support him in that. Anyway it’s kinda like DEAD BANG – he’s a total mess, and he’s pretty much all we got against these guys.
Terry Husk (Jude Law [EXISTENZ] playing a fictional character only a little bit based on the actual lead agent of the case) shows up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to reopen an abandoned field office. Sheriff Loftlin (Philip Granger, also the sheriff in JUGGERNAUT, TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL, SECRET LIVES, and LITTLE BROTHER OF WAR) kinda laughs at him for coming to what he considers a quiet farm town, and tries to steer him away when he asks about some white power flyers he saw, and if they’re related to the local white nationalist preacher, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak, ABDUCTION). From his reaction I assumed the sheriff was one of the racists, but we later find out it’s that other cop thing: he’s just an idiot who doesn’t recognize the threat. “It’s just talk” is what he says. “They mostly keep to themselves.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alison Oliver, Geena Maszaros, Jude Law, Jurnee Smollett, Justin Kurzel, Marc Maron, neo-nazis, Nicholas Hoult, Odessa Young, Philip Granger, true crime, Tye Sheridan, Victor Slezak, Zach Baylin
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 4 Comments »
