The conventional wisdom is that The Matrix Revolutions, the last of its trilogy, is weaker than its immediate forebear, The Matrix Reloaded, regardless of whether either of them is “good”; and I am proud to break with this convention. Not because I think that Revolutions is really good, or a successful return to the level […]

Many, many people love The Matrix. I am not one of them – I enjoy it well enough, but it doesn’t loom very large in my memory – nor was I in 2003, which is where our story begins. For it was in that year that two of the most heavily-anticipated movies of the 2000s […]

You don’t get to be a horror fan without developing a strong defense against crappy filmmaking, but holy hell, Chernobyl Diaries is absolutely not a satisfying viewing experience. Not that it was going to be great, or anything. But the intense, overriding degree to which it is not-great and in fact anti-great is still surprising: […]

Ironically, because there is no mail on U.S. Memorial Day, I didn’t get Memorial Day in time for a Memorial Day review. But what’s one day between friends, especially when the net result is celebrating the sacrifice of our brave men and women of uniform with fucking and killing, just the way they’d have wanted […]

The best part about Men in Black 3 – I doubt anybody would be violently driven to disagree, and I also doubt anybody would be terribly surprised – is Josh Brolin giving a performance that is at once a parody of Tommy Lee Jones, and an homage to Tommy Lee Jones, and a sincere attempt […]

Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: it took 10 long years of nobody anywhere giving much of a shit one way or the other, but […]

A guide to this blog’s James Bond marathon can be found right here. DR. NODirected by Terence YoungWritten by Richard Maibaum & Johanna Harwood & Berkely MatherPremiered 5 October, 1962 PRE-TITLE SEQUENCENA – the only Eon Productions Bond film without a pre-title sequence. TITLE SONGThis being the first-ever James Bond film and all, some of […]

I spent some time trying to massage “Blandleship” and “Baddleship” into a form that didn’t just hurt to look at it, and as you can tell, I failed. Anyone who has an idea for how to get to the pun I have in mind without such a grating neologism would be thanked. So, anyway, Battleship. […]

If I were to claim of Bernie, that it is Richard Linklater’s best film since Before Sunset – and that is exactly what I do claim – I haven’t really told you much of anything about it. “Better than the well-intentioned but dramatically arid Fast Food Nation? Better than the poundingly unnecessary remake of Bad […]

Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: of all the things you can turn into movies, board games are one of the weirdest, and an ice-cold […]

The literary career of James Bond, Agent 007 on Her Majesty’s secret service, began in 1953 when 44-year-old Ian Fleming, late of British Naval Intelligence, completed his dream of writing a spy novel that reflected his own awareness of the live of an espionage agent, with the publication of Casino Royale. Later fans of the […]

Calling Dark Shadows a return to form for director Tim Burton would be a damnable lie. It is, however, the first Tim Burton film in ages and ages that suggest that a return to form might even be possible. If I were looking for a pithy one-liner to describe the film, it would end up […]