There’s a moment in
RoboCop
when the eponymous law enforcer races through downtown Detroit on his sleek, black motorcycle and the camera follows him from behind at full speed, weaving through moving cars just as he does. Suddenly, horns take over the score, and I’ll be damned if many viewers don’t immediately think of the exact same shot from
The Dark Knight
(it doesn’t help that RoboCop and Batman have similar black suits either). And this isn’t the only time Jose Padilha’s reboot of the 1987 science fiction classic by Paul Verhoeven calls to mind Christopher Nolan’s game-changer. Look, it’s been six years since
Knight
redefined the standards of the genre picture, and, believe me, I too get annoyed with having to go back and compare current movies to that milestone, but it’s almost impossible not to do so when genre picture after genre picture, from Superhero films like
Man…
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When I heard the news Sunday that Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, was found dead in his New York City apartment, I was stunned speechless at first. Then I felt absolutely gutted. It was only a week ago I was watching Punch Drunk Love and witnessing a classic Hoffman freak-out (see Charlie Wilson’s War too), the type where heerupts into a hilarious cursing fit and his arms gesture with tyrannical authority, his face turns bright red, and his voice swells as if he’s giving a mad sermon. He turns a simple “No, fuck you!” to Adam Sandler’s socially inept Barry Egan into a powerhouse punch of moral degradation. And that was Hoffman’s incredible gift, he took the simplest of lines and the most troubled of characters – be it a music critic, a priest, a cult leader, a novelist, a CIA operative, etc. – and made them matter in the…
The only thing foreign about Gloria, a wonderful Chilean import that was snubbed from this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, is its setting and Spanish dialogue. The main crux of the movie, that of a divorced 58-year-old woman coming into her own later in life, harkens way back to the American cinema of the 1970s, when Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and others dug into the state of womanhood post-wifehood. These films all feature complex female leads who are independent from man’s indentity yet still yearn for interdependency nonetheless, and Gloria is no exception as it deftly balances the perks and pains of self-reliance.
Have you seen the trailers and TV spots for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit? The ones that make it seem like Kevin Costner’s CIA agent might really be a double agent? Or that Keira Knightly might be someone more than just Mrs. Jack Ryan? Well don’t buy into the “Trust No One” ad machine, for Shadow Recruit, the fifth movie to feature Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character, is as straightforward as espionage thrillers come. In fact, everyone is who they say are from the start. No twists. No turns. The only real surprise is that the film, starring Chris Pine as the titular spy, isn’t based on one of Clancy’s novels like its predecessors (The Hunt For Red October, Clear and Present Danger) and is rather an original story reboot. And not just any reboot, it’s an origin story with clear intensions of setting up a 007-like franchise…
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, along with Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and actor Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Rush), announced the nominees for the 86th Annual Academy Awards this morning. As is the case every year, the Academy shocked and surprised with its well-rounded group of nominees, with numerous early favorites and Golden Globe and SAG-nominated performances failing to earn recognition. It was always going to be a highly competitive awards season thanks to the overabundance of great films this year, but no one could have predicted some of the more surprising outcomes this morning (no Tom Hanks!?). Overall, Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity and David O. Russell’s American Hustle lead the year with ten nominations each, followed by Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave with nine. Other films with multiple nominations include Nebraska (6), Captain Phillips (6), Dallas Buyers Club (6), Her (5), The Wolf Of…
The tagline for August: Osage County, John Wells’ film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning play, reads, “Misery loves family.” It’s a deliciously sinister statement, one that represents the core of what makes the story work, for just as misery loves family, we – the audience and viewer – love watching misery love family. There’s just something addictively chilling about seeing families turn on each other, seeing loved ones sink their teeth into one another with digs and jabs that cut through the heart like a newly sharpened blade. It’s for this very reason the great Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams were such painfully pleasing writers. What’s more cruelly satisfying than watching Martha and George tear each other to shreds in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Or seeing Blanche DuBois emotionally poison the Kowalski’s in A Streetcar Named Desire? Like these playwrights, Letts exposes the festering wounds…
SHARF @ THE MOVIES 