Movies/Reviews

Allied’s megawatt star pairing should have yielded more excitement than this, but Robert Zemeckis’ direction saves this old-timey wartime romance from being a completely staid experience.

'Max Steel' is a rusty shell of superhero origin story clichés, bereft of excitement or originality. At the very least, it doesn’t look that cheap.

Thank goodness for dumb extreme tourists. Without their extreme stupidity, we practically wouldn`t have any modern horror films. If there`s a safe and/or logical way to get things done, expect them to do the exact opposite in the name of our entertainment, and expect them to bring along a cheap video camera to record all the happy memories.

The spectacle is as bombastic as ever and the laws of physics are as irrelevant as ever; the series continuing to entertain.

While its tonal shifts are jarring and its frenzied pace can be exhausting, 'Fabricated City' has enough reasonably clever tricks up its sleeve.

Looking through Robert De Niro`s recent filmography is a rather disheartening process. In the past decade or so, he`s soldiered his way through over-ripe dramas, unfunny comedies and pedestrian thrillers, with a gem of a film popping up every once in a while as reward for his efforts. One of the grand old men of Hollywood seems deeply intent on working as much as possible, even while the industry that once made full and glorious use of his prodigious talents no longer has any idea what to do with him. It`s a shame and a trend that isn`t, sadly, bucked with Killing Season, an odd revenge drama that flits uncomfortably between the genres of action thriller, horror movie and torture porn.

Many years after the Bosnian War, American military vet Benjamin Ford (De Niro) has retreated with his scars of the physical and psychological variety to a remote mountain cabin, hiding away from humanity in general and his loving son Chris (Milo Ventimiglia) specifically. Unexpectedly, he makes his first real human connection in a long time with Emil Kovacs (John Travolta), a garrulous ex-Serbian soldier he meets seemingly by chance in the woods. But it soon becomes clear to Ford that his new acquaintance harbours war wounds too: including a bitterly personal desire for revenge that can only be slaked in a hunting season of his own devising.

 

There`s a germ of a great psychological drama buried beneath the troubling trappings of Killing Season. Both De Niro and Travolta rip into their roles with impressive levels of commitment: the former constructing a tough-as-nails exterior around a credibly vulnerable man riddled with the doubts and guilt of war, the latter somehow working his way around a thick European accent to lend an air of puzzling charisma to a character with deeply unsympathetic, sociopathic tendencies. It`s largely because of their efforts that the film is strangely effective in its quieter moments.

Unfortunately, those are few and far between. Evan Daugherty`s script is concerned less with mining emotional drama and more with ramping up the film`s action beats and ludicrously dark twists. To that end, Killing Season seems to almost revel in the physical pain and suffering it doles out to both Ford and Kovacs. This is not so much the action-thriller version of movies about post-traumatic stress disorder or battle fatigue, like The Hurt Locker, instead bringing to mind the brutally banal, horrifyingly pointless torture porn that forms the premise of the Saw franchise.

 

Try as they might, neither De Niro nor Travolta can save a film that doesn`t really know what it`s trying to be. It takes one too many detours down the torture-porn route to be a truly effective psychological drama, and lacks any of the bite and wit required to lift it out of its more melodramatic moments. At one point, Killing Season was intended as a vehicle to reunite Travolta with Nicolas Cage for the first time since their barmy action smash-hit Face/Off. It says something unspeakably tragic about the final product and De Niro`s ongoing downward career trajectory that the resulting film might actually have been better if it had stayed that course.

Summary: A strange, occasionally potent mix of torture porn and action thriller, just barely salvaged by but hardly worthy of its stars.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Shawne Wang 

"The Cured" is a dark and depressing zombie film about guilt and politics, presented in rather obvious metaphors that are hyper-relevant in the current times of divisive ideologies.

This action thriller is often breathtakingly dumb and the “terrorist attacks in the name of entertainment” angle is problematic in this day and age, but the sheer lack of subtlety is enjoyable in its own right. U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!

By day, Mike (Channing Tatum) is an entrepreneur an all-American guy chasing the American dream. But by night, he takes on his stage persona of Magic Mike, the hot headliner in an all-male revue at one of Tampa`s finest strip clubs. Magic Mike follows Tatum`s eponymous protagonist as he tries to balance his latest ‘preneurs and his less than conventional lifestyle choices. All while taking rookie Adam aka The Kid (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and showing him the ropes of picking up women, making easy money, and having a good time.

A rare crime mystery with little to no action, but bolstered by compelling performances and engaging storytelling on the dark sides of law enforcement and unsolved murders.

Adapting a beloved fantasy series, especially one that lives bright and beautiful in the imaginations of readers the world over, is always a risky proposition. The final film(s) could be great (Lord Of The Rings), good (Harry Potter), or terrible (Percy Jackson). For the first half of the film,...

A film that will make space geeks squeal, “Geostorm” takes your breath away with astounding visual effects and soundtracks to compensate for its farfetched plot.