It’s a bad sign when you get ten minutes into a movie and think, “oh, man, this is gonna suck.” Unfortunately that’s where I was with “Underworld: Awakening”, the forth in the “Underworld” series but only the third with the beautiful Kate Beckinsale. “Awakening” takes place 12 years after “Evolution”– remember “Rise of the Lycans” was a prequel.
Continue reading ‘Underworld: Awakening’ shows sings of a franchise running on fumes — movie review
Steven Soderbergh has made some of my favorite guilty pleasure movies in the last ten to fifteen years. I love “Out of Sight”, “The Limey”, “Traffic” and “Solaris”– even the “Ocean’s” movies were at least, for the most part, solid entertainment. Lately though, it’s starting to seem more and more like Soderbergh may have completely lost his mind. “Magic Mike” was awful. “Contagion” was — okay. I went back and watched “Haywire” and it’s just another gimmick movie that is completely void of everything that made some of his early work so great.
#51 of 100 on my 100 Movies I’ve Never Seen Before Challenge (part II)
Except for Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie” in 1976, the art of the silent movie has, for the most part, gone the way of the dinosaur. Once thought by many (nearly 100 years ago) to be the most pure form of cinema, silent films evolved, incorporated sound, color, etc. and Hollywood hasn’t looked back since. It’s no surprise that with the release of “The Artist”, a black and white silent movie that was also…silent– and paid tribute to the early days of Hollywood and the transition from silent movies to “talkies”, Hollywood drooled all over it and threw a ton of awards at it. After all, Hollywood loves nothing more than paying tribute to itself. Continue reading ‘The Artist’ (2011) movie review