In the opening scene of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), leading man and superspy for the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), jumps onto the wing of a jet and hangs on for dear life as it takes off. A shot of this, incidentally, is featured on one of the promotional posters for this movie. And what […]
Debating Avengers: Age of Ultron with The Waffle Press
Diego Crespo of The Waffle Press is a stalwart defender of Age of Ultron, a film he believes qualifies as one of the best and most thematically rich MCU films released thus far. I, on the other hand, found Joss Whedon’s Avengers follow-up utterly hollow, terribly confusing and altogether disappointing. Diego invited me onto his show to discuss […]
Kill the Messenger
Curiosity killed the cat, and all of the good journalists along with it. I was just a kid when Gary Webb broke news on the Contra-cocaine scandal. I don’t remember it. My recollection of the 90s reeks of the Clinton fiasco and not much else. As we learn in the epilogue of Kill the Messenger, the government fully […]
2013 A Strong Year in Film
Moviegoers were well-tended in 2013. The past year in film was certainly diverse, with plenty of highs and lows along the way. With a decent slew of quality popcorn flicks and some very pleasant surprises in multiple genres, this was a big year for the silver screen. While it wasn’t quite the sequel-dominated year that, […]
American Hustle
American Hustle opens with a balding, rotund, middle-aged man distastefully gluing a toupée to his head. You can taste the plaster fumes as little rivulets drip down his scalp. Then he takes his remaining strands of hair and pulls them over the furry piece now attached to his skin. The scene is uncomfortable, synthetic, difficult […]
The Bourne Legacy with Mike and Søren
Here’s how our Dueling Reviews format works: each contributor writes an independent, abbreviated, spoiler-free review of the film. Then, the contributors come together in a podcast and discuss the movie in depth. Mike’s Review A week after I saw The Bourne Legacy, a friend called me up telling me that he was going to see it that […]
The Avengers is Assembled Well-Enough
My friend Josh Rosenfield over on Popcorn Culture recently wrote a critique of The Avengers. While it was a well-written analysis, it was, shall we say, somewhat less favorable than I was with my review. I felt that the points I wanted to make into rebuttal to that post were too much for a comment, so I decided to […]
The Avengers
Well here we are – it’s May, and The Avengers, my second most anticipated movie of the year (out-shined only by the behemoth that is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), has finally been released. Under the direction of perhaps one of my favorite writer/directors, Joss Whedon, my expectations for the film were tempered only by some […]
Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol
Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol knows it is an unabashedly silly popcorn flick, and it is with that wherewithal that it pulls off its story and characters so ably. That is not to say the film is without its flaws; rest assured, the film makes more than a few missteps. However, while it is far […]
