Letterboxd — Your life in film

When you watch a film called ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER, the first question that usually hits someone would be "Why?". And one would hope that finding out the answer to that question would be part of the joy of watching such a bizarre alternate universe take on a historical American figure. Sadly, what the audience is in for falls very far from this train of thought and wanders into territories that are both strange and sour to the taste.

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While the film does serve up the expected litany of extraordinary leaps (and lapses) of logic, over-the-top comic book ham-fistery and some storytelling laziness, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN actually succeeds in living up to its name by delivering a cinematic Spidey experience that comic book fans have been waiting for since the character's creation in 1962. The primary problem with Sam Raimi's financially successful trilogy, that came to end barely five years prior, is that it presented a version of the…

On par with most cinematic adaptations of television shows (i.e. 'average, but not irksome'), the DARK SHADOWS movie dips itself into the zesty flavor of the original, but strays too far from the source material in favour of cinematic overkill and a blockbuster-mentality that ultimately destroys all traits of uniqueness.

Opening with an overblown, VFX-driven and utterly unnecessary prologue (most of which can be seen in the trailer), the film downshifts a gear into two acts of sedate and dusty…

George Romero's had an interesting set of innings in his career; invariably with the benefit of hindsight it becomes apparent (when looking at his latest films) that his classic works like DAWN OF THE DEAD genuinely do portray his artistic voice and style without limitation despite the fact that his early films were notoriously underfunded. With a lengthy body of work, it is now apparent that Romero was never a particularly great director or an astoundingly talented artist who could…

Hollywood rarely has the balls to blend two genres into a single movie, especially one that is split directly down the middle. DEJA VU has the distinction of being one that is attempted, even if it does not succeed. Exactly one half criminal procedural and one half time-travel techno-thriller (which seems to spring up out of almost nowhere), the resultant film caused a rift between the screenwriters and director Tony Scott who apparently 'riddled the film with plot-holes that did…

The martial arts genre, since its inception way back in the days of silent movies, has always come and gone in the tide of acceptance and rejection by populist audiences. And as an age passes and the world seems to forget about flying feet and fists of fury, it takes only a handful of revitalized, visionary projects to bring the chop-sockey back into the limelight. For indie and festival cinema fans, THE RAID could very well be such a film.…

William Shakespeare's biggest fanboy - one Sir Kenneth Branagh - has come a long way in revitalizing the word of the Bard for modern cinema since the days of Lawrence Olivier and such ilk. People have called this, the most complete text production (98% accurate) of Shakespeare's greatest and longest play HAMLET (all 4 hours of it) as pompous, overblown and over-the-top piece of fan fluff. This reviewer, while acknowledging that elements of this film could rub wrongly against the…

The film project launched, primarily, as a piece of stunt-casting that pays off (mostly) and then resolves into a film-friendly, greatest-hits version of the Bard's greatest (and longest) play is probably many people's first port-of-call when looking for a cinematic adaptation of that text. That doesn't necessarily make it the best version, but there is something to be said about accessibility.

The so-called 'Mel Gibson's HAMLET" is the cinematic equivalent of a high-school production in so far as the play…

Between the more-ambition-than-ability indie 'classic' of the original MAD MAX and the split-personality, disappointing fizzle of this film, it is easy to forget how influential and creatively sizzling the world crafted director George Miller actually is. The MAD MAX series - unlike so many modern genre films - was not inspired or designed as homage, but breathtakingly original and viscerally unforgettable. An astonishing, post-nuclear-apocalyptic world where gasoline and water are the new currency, where roaming gangs of mutants on metal…

Whenever Disney goes through its bad phases, it seems to default to the understanding that all children don't know what bad acting looks like, what bad writing sounds like and that they need everything constantly cranked up to 11 in case they may fall asleep in the cinema. JOHN CARTER was, going by this philosophy, clearly made for an audience under the age of 10.

Pretty as it is and dotted with spectacular visual effects, it seems ironic that a…

If ever there was a film by which could illustrate the lens of banality by which Hollywood views the world at large, one could do worse than examining the lens by which SHERLOCK HOLMES has been rendered. In the tradition of hijacking cultural capital for its own purpose, Hollywood here claims a multi-million-dollar 'reimagining' of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's astonishing and beloved consulting detective in order to trim off the meat and create a dish more palatable to Hollywood's target…

Ridley Scott is the kind of director that I think most filmmakers want to be like in that he doesn't know how not to make an interesting film. Even when he fumbles the ball and goes feet over ass on the field, his films are always absolutely fascinating. This does lead to an interesting notion though that, when dealing with a real 'filmmaker' like Ridley Scott, it's always a case of glass-is-half-full. You don't see what he achieves as much…