R.I.P.D. isn’t a movie to hate, isn’t a movie to love and, most of all, isn’t a movie to get very excited about one way or the other.
While nothing close to a great sequel, RED 2 is still pretty darn entertaining, and if the cast and crew felt the need to return for one more adventure in order to complete the trilogy that would be just fine with me.
Turbo works, surprisingly so, its contest of brotherly love and understanding a warm-hearted race where those watching the spectacle end up being the biggest winners of them all.
Less than 12 months later, producers/writers/directors Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard have managed to cajole another group of talented filmmakers to take their crack at the concept, and results are, to be perfectly frank, close to astonishing. V/H/S 2 doesn’t just improve upon the first film, doesn’t just take note of its missteps and mistakes, it quickly enters the pantheon as one of the great horror anthologies ever made.
The Way, Way Back proves a familiar story in the hands of great filmmakers confident in their abilities (as well as in the talented team they’ve assembled to assist them) can still be worthwhile. This movie is wonderful, nothing more, and certainly nothing less, the truths it revels in may not be new or revelatory but that doesn’t make them any less compelling or, for that matter, universal.
I do realize I’m waxing poetic about a movie revolving around monsters and robots duking it out for supremacy, on that point I don’t have a lot to say in rebuttal. The thing is, what do I have to rebut? The 8-year-old in me had a jolly great time watching [Pacific Rim], but then so did the thirty-something film critic.
going to feel like their time sitting in the theatre next to them is anything approaching a chore. There are some major laughs, and as trivial as the story might be that fact Despicable Me 2 entertains as much as it does with such effortless enthusiasm is admittedly surprising. So if spending time with Gru, his adoptive children and his many Minions is your idea of a good time, it’s hard to imagine anyone who feels like that will be even moderately disappointed in this somewhat charming sequel.
Verbinksi and his team have taken this treasured, still-vibrant character and transformed both he and his compatriot into shells of what they could have been, this incarnation of The Lone Ranger so misbegotten it makes one long for the days of Klinton Spilsbury, and if you understand that reference than you fully comprehend just how gigantic a disaster this failed reinvention truly is.
20 Feet from Stardom has style, it has pizzazz and most of all its got power, it’s saga of singers at the cusp of success continually giving every ounce of themselves to make it happen for someone else a universal inspirational daydream in every way that matters.