The Purge: Anarchy is an unapologetically violent exercise in sensationalistic mayhem, that fact is not up for debate, and for my part I’m fine with this, part of me even a tiny bit curious exactly where DeMonaco and company might be interested in taking things next.

X-Men: Days of Future Past manages to take such a convoluted scenario and present it in ways that are easy to process and even more fun to digest. It treats its audience with intelligence and respect but doesn’t skimp on action pyrotechnics.

Edwards has done the unthinkable, crafting a modern Godzilla that not only pays deft homage to the creature’s glorious past but also makes many of its closest impersonators feel hollow and misguided when stood up next to it.

That’s what The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does best, waste inherent potential. It’s got a great actor as the main character; does almost nothing with him. Has a wonderful actress as the female lead; gives her embarrassingly little to do. Casts two great stars – one up and coming, the other a bona fide Oscar-winner – as the bad guys; gives them precious little of substance to do.

If it had been 20 minutes shorter, had the filmmakers not been so encumbered by the need to maintain fidelity to the MCU, I think it is safe to say Captain America: The Winter Soldier would be the best Marvel movie thus far.

If Sabotage (2014) doesn’t quite get there, it’s not for lack of trying on [Schwarzengger’s] part, and I like the decision to tackle something so profoundly dark, close to off-putting. The movie is a pulpy piece of revenge noir that’s in the end as bleak and as riddled with despair as these enterprises can get (think Man on Fire), that in and of itself almost enough to warrant a recommendation on my part right there alone.

The world Divergent depicts is hardly special or new, and while I am slightly curious to see what happens next I can’t say I’m enough so to proclaim I’d be all that bummed if the studio decided to forgo making the sequels and let things end with this.

Is it any surprise that Need for Speed is dumb movie?

Ambitious Empire Almost Rises to the Occasion 300: Rise of an Empire is, for the most part, set concurrently to the events depicted in Zack Snyder’s audacious, hugely successful (and somewhat influential) adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Instead of focusing on one key event, however, this movie, also based on a Miller graphic […]