Browsing: Adventure

Reviews Screen Shot 2015-06-01 at 9.06.31 PM
6.5
0

The Rock. Earthquakes. Paul Giamatti. Special effects. These are the four pillars of San Andreas, an action film that showcases the complete and utter devastation of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, as the San Andreas fault line splits apart in a series of increasingly high-intensity earthquakes. San Francisco’s architectural pillars are unable to support the city, which crumbles fantastically into a pile of fire, dust and dirt, topped off by a tsunami. At the centre of …

Film Festival a space program
9.0
2

Count this as my favorite discovery at SXSW. A Space Program will polarize audiences. In fact, many people walked out during the World Premiere screening. The mockumentary/performance piece is sci-fi by way of Wes Anderson. Writers and directors Van Neistat and Tom Sachs constructed the basics required for space travel: space shuttle, space suits…

Reviews Screen Shot 2015-05-22 at 11.47.22 PM
5.5
1

Tomorrowland is one of those movies that clings so tightly to the thin line between “good” and “meh” that it’s difficult to review, because each opinion is hedged with another. There is plenty of good and nothing explicitly “bad,” but none of it goes anywhere, so the audience just sits and waits for 130 minutes. And how am I supposed to review the act of sitting and waiting? As Roger Ebert once wrote …

NP Approved Screen Shot 2015-05-16 at 11.45.10 PM
9.0
1

We meet Max (Tom Hardy) in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world. He is an emotionally broken man, wandering the vast desert landscape alone, haunted by sharp and painful flashbacks. We are given no time to ease comfortably into the film before it launches into a stunning, fast-paced opening sequence, with interspersed flashbacks and imagery sometimes reminiscent of a feverish nightmare, where Max is …

Reviews Screen Shot 2015-05-11 at 7.54.07 PM
5.0
0

Living in a nursing home after a long and colourful life, Allan Karlsson’s 100th birthday makes him seize the opportunity to escape his current predicament. Silently and unnoticed, he climbs out of the window and disappears. How this is possible you might question, but it’s a good start to the consequential humour of his tale. If you’re sitting down to watch Allan Karlsson’s tale, the right angle is …

NP Approved Screen Shot 2015-05-05 at 7.23.12 PM
9.4
0

The key to any comic book movie’s success is its characters, and nobody seems to know this better than Joss Whedon. One of only three people to have a sole writing credit for an MCU film and the only one to do so for two films, Whedon has not only written a sequel that runs laps around the original in terms of action and scale, but it also raises the stakes in ways that very incredibly real and dramatic.

IFFBoston 2015 the great alone 1
8.4
0

The Iditarod is not only a challenging word to spell but a wholly incredible race. An over 1,000-mile long dog sled race across treacherous and freezing landscapes, where the racer has to rely only on himself, his dogs, and the kindness of strangers. While the clothing and equipment may improve, the value system and the beguiling simplicity of the race’s description remains constant. Lance…

Reviews Screen Shot 2015-04-20 at 9.18.16 PM
8.0
0

“It’s just like life: you get the funny with the tragic,” Noel Marshall says in one of the Roar’s dozens of unintentionally hilarious lines. One can’t help but wonder how aware of the irony of that statement he was. Roar is a movie whose very existence is predicated on a dark comedic tragedy, the zaniest Hollywood story that puts all other “making of” stories to shame. There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe just …

BUFF 2015 magnetic 1
3.2
0

A few years back on a trip to Disney World I remember sitting down for the Michael Jackson 3D film Captain EO. The strange mixture of space opera, muppets, and music all under the confused direction of Francis Ford Coppola reminded me of Jackson’s penchant for lengthy music…

Reviews Kindsman-the-secret-service
5.0
0

Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, Stardust, Cake) may never direct an entry in the official Bond canon (No. 23, Spectre, is currently in production under Sam Mendes’ guidance), but Kingsman: The Secret Service, an adaptation of Mark Millar (Nemesis, Civil War, Wanted) and Dave Gibbons’ (Watchmen) comic-book ….

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