This past weekend, Gareth Edwards’
Godzilla
opened to a monstrous $93 million, which is pretty remarkable for a non-sequel, non-superhero movie, especially one following in the footsteps of one of the most critically panned blockbusters of the last decade (that would be Roland Emmerich’s reviled 1998 version). If someone told me several years ago that a giant reptilian monster would out debut a legendary web-slinger, in the same month no less, I would have shrugged them off without hesitation, but such is the case as Godzilla stomped on Peter Parker and stole his summer crown (although the X-Men will probably steal it again this upcoming weekend). Clearly, Legendary Pictures’ well-planned marketing strategy – which hid the titular monster, played up the massive world destruction, and featured an angry Bryan Cranston trading in meth for mutated beasts – paid off in spades. While anticipation was extremely high going in – not…
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I would imagine that releasing a “debut feature” is a nerve-wracking experience for a director, but when your name is Gia Coppola it has to have some added layers of serious anxiety. Granddaughter of New Hollywood icon Francis Ford Coppola (
The Godfather, Apocalypse Now
, Gia follows in the footsteps of her aunt Sofia (
Lost in Translation, Bling Ring
) and uncle Roman (the ill-fated
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
) and into the director’s chair for her debut
Palo Alto
, based on a 2010 collection of short stories by actor James Franco, and she luckily falls into the same cool and sophisticated camp as her stylish aunt. While it’s easy to dismiss an emerging Coppola as riding on the fame and piggybank of his/her legendary family tree, as many did to Sofia in her early days, Gia displays a unique, accomplished vision…
When it comes to the heated debate amongst superhero-movie fans over whether their allegiances lie with DC Comics or Marvel Studios, I will be the first to admit that I am the farthest thing from a Marvel guy. The game-changing studio may have kick started the recent “world-building revolution”, in which blockbusters are obsessed with creating universes of interconnected franchises by any means necessary (see the upcoming
Amazing Spider Man 2
or 2016’s
Batman Vs. Superman
), but from where I stand, Marvel Studios is nothing more than a manufacturing company, churning out the same finely tuned product over and over again for the past six years. Even with the original
Iron Man
’s undisputed pleasures, most notably the sly star-is-reborn performance by Robert Downey Jr., and
The Avengers
’ Whedonesque, self-reflexive energy, the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe all share the same strains of DNA, which make them…
David Ayer is a tasteless filmmaker. When he started his career as the screenwriter for such hits like
Training Day
and
The Fast and the Furious,
he had the benefit of filmmakers who knew how to incorporate gritty, over-the-top violence in ways that were emotionally raw, in
Training Day’s
case, or zanily pulpy, in
Fast and Furious’.
Behind the camera as a director, however, Ayer seems to have no control, relishing in bloody, bombastic shootouts that overshadow any sense of plot, pace, or character development. Senseless violence on screen has always been a hot button issue and Ayer seems to be its biggest proponent. Unfortunately and unsettlingly, his latest,
Sabotage,
a DEA actioner starring an aged Arnold Schwarzenegger, is as tasteless as filmmaking gets. Honestly, it’s downright disturbing.
Was there a better moment this entire awards season than when Lupita Nyong’o passionately took the stage to accept her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress? I don’t think so. The
12 Years A Slave
stunner, looking gorgeous in her light blue gown, capped off a remarkable debut awards tour with a much-deserved win (the fact Nyong’o is such a radiant ball of joy makes her soul-shattering agony in
12 Years
all the more worthy of the prize) and a truly impeccable speech, dedicated to all the dreamers out there striving to make their goals valid. An Academy Award for your first film performance out of college aint too shabby. Nyong’o was just one of many winners who delivered unusually tasteful speeches, along with Jared Leto’s heartfelt tribute to his mother and Matthew McConaughey’s existential rambling about the three things he needs most in life. Is it just me or…
We finally made it folks! After months and months of campaigning and one precursor award after the next, the 86
th
Annual Academy Awards airs tonight at 8pm/ET on ABC. It’s been a truly remarkable year for cinema and tonight the Academy chooses which films and performances enter the prestigious pantheon of Oscar-winners. With Ellen DeGeneres taking the reigns as host,
Everyone who sees the trailers and TV-spots for
Non-Stop,
the ones where Liam Neeson beats people up on an airplane while racing against time to stop a hijacking, quickly labels the film “
Taken
on an airplane”. If only it was.
Taken
transformed the dramatically gifted Neeson into a rare breed of authentic, old-age action hero, and the key to what makes that film such a great time is how willing it is to bypass a sensible plot in favor of one bonkers smack-down after another.
Taken
is infectiously ballistic, and you can tell from its trailers that
Non-Stop
wants to be the same. And though Neeson’s beat-downs and shouting threats still hit with brute force, screenwriters John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle pack so many unneeded, eye-rolling clichés into the story that
Non-Stop
is neither as emotional as it wants to be nor as ludicrously fun as…
SHARF @ THE MOVIES 