7 Results

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is the latest example of how CGI can mess up depictions of magic on film. To discover why venture back with me to my former life as an amateur magician…

When writer/director Christopher Nolan declared he would put his stamp on the Batman franchise with a jet black trilogy of downers, he wasn’t joshing around. The Dark Knight Rises, a sound-n-fury series send-off that feels more funereal than fun park, continues the tradition of taking adolescent concepts and hurtling them into an unrelentingly nasty and political adult world. Watching this [...]

A quick question, before we go further: why do you think Warner Bros’ wholesome 2011 family adventure Dolphin Tale — “the amazing true story of a brave dolphin and the compassionate strangers who banded together to save her life,” thank you official synopsis — generated disappointing results at the US box office? Your answer, if [...]

There is some wisdom in that old adage “never meet your idols.” The logic being, of course, that an actual person – with limitations, flaws, warts, BO, bum hair and streak marks just like the rest of us – can never live up to the unrealistic expectations we sometimes bestow upon our heroes. If you [...]

Director Michael Mann re-enters the biopic genre post-Ali (2001) with all tommy guns blazing in Public Enemies, a sentiment-stripped ode to the ego and exploits of notorious curt-talkin’ anti-establishment bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). No Mann crime flick is complete without a man-on-man dynamic and here Christian Bale plays the cop to Depp’s robber; [...]

Terminator Salvation is based in a not-too-distant future where computers appear to have taken a violent stand against Windows Vista and where human beings lie scattered across the planet in small pockets of resistance fighters, living amongst rubble and ruin, inhaling the cinders of mankind and rueing the day alt-control-delete stopped working. Director McG, whose [...]

A second trailer has hit the net for Michael Mann’s John Dillinger pic Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin ‘Little Mel’ Purvis. Mann has a penchant for long, elaborate and patiently paced stories told with strong performances and visual finesse (The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The [...]