By Le Anne Lindsay
Director Steve McQueen (Hunger), (why doesn't he go by S. McQueen or use his middle name, Rodney or Stephen?) has created an intense character study of a sex addict without really having to go overboard on graphic content. There are a lot of very visual sex scenes, but it's not gratuitous. With that being said, it was still embarrassing to watch the film with so many senior citizens.
By Le Anne Lindsay
If I owned an incredibly elegant, picturesque, stately castle with an 18 hole golf course and stable full of horses, I too would be sad and scared to see the end of the world, because you gotta figure life on the other side might not be as good.
In writer/director Lars von Trier's film, Melancholia is a planet that has been hiding behind the sun for eons and has suddenly made its appearance known as it starts traveling through the galaxy.
On Thursday, PFS interns Brittany and Alex went to a screening of Warrior, which comes out in theaters September 9. Mark your calendars!
Brittany Says...
Don’t let the Mixed Marital Arts theme of Warrior fool you into thinking its just another sports story. This film is more about family struggle than MMA, thanks to fantastic performances from the three leads, Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte. The beginning of the movie was nothing special but it set the stage for the intense final scenes. I can’t remember ever being so invested in a final battle.
Well, that was disappointing. "Your Highness" turns out to be a juvenile letdown of epic proportions. You needn't look further than the title to glean the intellectual extent of its pothead-pandering humor, which wholly lacks the tragic undercurrent that made co-writers Danny McBride and Ben Best's equally crass HBO endeavor "Eastbound and Down" such a success.
If the filmography of Robert Rodriguez were projected onto the wall of Plato's cave, the fever dreams of its sorry inhabitants might come out something like this. "Sucker Punch" is an asylum for every unoriginal impulse that strikes director Zack Snyder's attention deficient mind. It is an unmitigated disaster of storytelling—thematically diarrheic with visuals to match. This hopeless post-"Inception" melodrama isn't based on a comic book like either of Snyder's previous efforts, but every genre cliché carries over tenfold.
"Paul" is innocuous extraterrestrial fun, but should have been funnier given the caliber of its cast and crew. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the British bosom buddies who previously collaborated with Edgar Wright on genre send-ups "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," pen their first screenplay, which lovingly pays tribute to a half century of science fiction moviemaking.
Anthropomorphic animals are the bread and butter of the animation industry. Ever since Walt Disney found a cash cow in Mickey Mouse, the medium has tickled audiences with talking critters that span the breadth of the animal kingdom. But Rango, the titular chameleon of Gore Verbinski's cartoon western, is something of an anomaly. The gangly, photorealistic bipedal lizard didn't graduate from the "Bambi" school of cuddly creature design. Voiced by Johnny Depp in rare comedic form, the character is defined by beady eyes, a sharply crooked neck, and a gaudy Hawaiian T-shirt.
"I Am Number Four" is Number Two. A cheap joke, but it's just what this adolescent stinker deserves. Granted, nigh unwatchable cinematic misfires haunt the calendar's early months, amongst whose company D.J. Caruso's latest foray into teen actioners is admittedly a god among insects. Copping a Michael Bay aesthetic (Bay produces), "Number Four" does "Twilight" by way of "Transformers." The film is slick, glossy, and absolutely uninteresting.
"The Adjustment Bureau" is preposterous, and before you counter with "Well, duh, it's science fiction," allow me to elaborate. I'm down with the premise that mankind is safeguarded by an invisible shadow organization that dictates the paths we follow and the decisions we make—what baffles me is that they achieve these means through (spoiler alert?) magic hats. I wish I were joking.
