Favorite films
Recent activity
All filmsRecent reviews
More-
Fast & Furious 6 2013
My review for NPR can be found here. A letdown after the surprisingly good Fast Five, but it does have one great sequence:
"Fast 6 pits Shaw's crew against Dominic's in a high-tech battle royale, but it has a devil of a time explaining why everyone should hop into their cars. The obligatory underground racing sequence here — in a London that looks no different from the scenes in Miami or Rio — is such an afterthought that the big…
Popular reviews
More-
Iron Man 3 2013
"You've got a minute to live. Fill it with words." Not sure why I feared that blockbuster filmmaking would muffle Shane Black's authorial voice—after all, that voice was established in blockbusters like Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, etc.—and it's a pleasure to report that it mostly hasn't been, at least in the time between the expected Marvel plot/action beats. The least expensive scenes in Iron Man 3 are the most entertaining, with lots of Black-style…
-
Safety Not Guaranteed 2012
The perfect example of the indie calling-card movie: Looks great, quirky as hell, totally useless. Aubrey Plaza does what she can, but there's just no weight to any of these "time travel" shenanigans at all, even as metaphor. I really hope digital filmmaking gets cheap enough to where aspiring Hollywood directors can sends movies like this straight to studio executives. It feels like the audience is witnessing a transaction.