It might be tempting to spend the night with The Man from U.N.C.L.E.—it’s attractive, stylish and has a great soundtrack—but the experience won’t satisfy you. This slapdash movie throws its scrambled narrative into your lap and expects you to do all of the work to figure it out. Neither director Guy Ritchie nor cowriter Lionel Wigram […]
Mr. Turner
As he slumps further into his seat, a numbing chill besets a visibly drained man. His eyelids uncontrollably waver between open and closed like a ship’s bow undulating in the sea. The abject look emblazoned across his face tells a tale of defeat, hinting at the effects of a grave and strenuous ordeal. He’s had enough; surely […]
London Film Festival 2014: Goodbye to Language 3D
I remember stumbling across artist Marcel Duchamp’s infamous piece, “Fountain”, in the Liverpool Tate Modern art gallery a few years ago. The sculpture, if you’re audacious enough to label it as such, is simply a urinal tipped on its back. The only indication that this slab of utilitarian porcelain is in fact a piece of art […]
The Giver
Jeff Bridges spent eighteen years trying to adapt The Giver for the big screen. I wish he had succeeded earlier. One thing that became achingly apparent while watching the film is that it would have been far subtler and far more affecting ten or fifteen years ago. Lois Lowry published her Newbury Award-winning novel in 1993, and […]
Noah
Darren Aronofsky, a director best known for Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010), has fallen victim to that most dreaded art-versus-production trope of Hollywood: a big budget. Noah had financial backing north of $100 million and you can see every cent of it. Everything about this film is supersized – giant tracking shots, a […]
Transcendence
“Artificial intelligence is bad, mmkay?” That’s what Wally Pfister, the cinematographer and frequent Christopher Nolan-collaborator, wants you to believe in his directorial debut, Transcendence. The death-by-sentient-computers tale is familiar ground, and it’s covered in much better fashion elsewhere. If you’re in the mood for a good tech scare, skip this film and re-watch Terminator. That film is […]
Divergent
It’s easy to see where Divergent borrowed from other young adult franchises. As a movie adaptation of Veronica Roth’s bestselling novel Divergent, can check all the same boxes as the juggernaut that is The Hunger Games. Comparisons between the franchises are inevitable, but frankly, Divergent doesn’t make much effort to avoid them. Sharp-shooting female protagonist? Check. Dystopian North American Fascist regime? Check. Culture […]
Pompeii
Let me set the scene. You’re a wealthy young woman from Pompeii. You’re traveling for days in an uncomfortable horse-led caravan, finally returning home after a strenuous visit to Rome. Along the way, one of your steeds drops to the ground with a desperate whinny. And because for some reason neither you nor any of […]
Movie 43
I decided to incur the wrath of the internet today. I have never been interested in contrarianism for its own sake; I have never defended or criticized a film that I didn’t feel strongly about. It is with this outlook that I say Movie 43, a sketch film that has earned universal derision from the […]
Walking With Dinosaurs 3D
I can sum up my thoughts on Walking With Dinosaurs 3D in just two words. If you know anything about the history of this production, you probably know what they are: Shut. Up. Walking With Dinosaurs, named after the television miniseries released by the BBC in 1999, departs from the naturalistic, documentary-style presentation of its […]
Oz the Great and Powerful
I’m always curious why auteur directors step outside of their boxes. Even if the films they make aren’t particularly good, they’re at least consistent, and they enhance our understanding of the director’s style. That said, I’m of the opinion that Sam Raimi needs to get back in his horror box, and fast. I’m in the […]
Not Fade Away
While I am an avid HBO original series enthusiast (Rome, Deadwood, etc.), I admit never got acquainted with David Chase’s The Sopranos. I remember the show’s rise and its subsequent immense popularity, but I was too young at the time to start watching and I haven’t found the time to since. In any case, the […]
Five Movie Fails for 2012
Sometimes movies are just plain bad, as we well know. But in this author’s humble opinion, seeing the films that we wanted so badly to like crash and burn is much, much worse. Here’s a list of five films that were nowhere near as good as they should have been, making them the biggest disappointments […]
Quantum of Solace by Tim and Søren (Archive)
This is from the archives, back when Movie Fail was just a few high school kids and a computer. Tim Nicholson and Søren Hough tackle Quantum of Solace, the sequel to the much-revered reboot of the 007 franchise starring Daniel Craig. At the end, Tim and Søren summarize the movie with an evaluation of the […]
