Letterboxd — Your life in film

Summary
Man of Steel is a modern retelling of the origin of Clark Kent, AKA Superman (Henry Cavill). A young Clark learns to understand his abilities as well as his place in a world that may fear him for his god-like powers. Just as Clark begins to learn about his alien heritage, the villainous General Zod (Michael Shannon) arrives on Earth with plans to make a new home for the surviving Kryptonians, threatening the lives of the entire human race.…

There was a lot of buzz around this flick back in 2013. It marked the first time in this classic horror series that director Sam Raimi & title character Ash Williams, played by the delightfully schticky actor Bruce Campbell, did not return to the series.

A reboot with none of the original cast and crew in a movie landscape riddled with bad reboots, this just had to be crap….

But hot damn! They nailed it! 

Keeping most of the plot elements…

Summary
Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as Ellison Oswalt, a struggling writer looking for his next big book deal. Unbeknownst to his family, Oswalt has just moved them into a home where a gruesome crime took place to draw inspiration and resources for his next story. While moving in, he discovers several Super 8 films in the attic, each showing a family being brutally executed in a variety of ways. One of the families were the previous residents of the house.…

Joe, a hitman known as a looper, kills men sent back from the future until he discovers the man sent back to be killed is himself. It gets more complicated when the older Joe is in search of a small boy who will grow up to become “The Rainmaker”, the new head of the mob who ordered his hit.

Looper felt like a bit of a coming-out party for Rain Johnson. The film is full of unique, high-concept sci-fi ideas,…

Anderson: “Sir, he's thinking about going for your gun.”
Dredd: “Yeah.”
Anderson: “He just changed his mind.”
Dredd: “Yeah.”

A Quick Summary
Is it any coincidence that this came out a year after The Raid (2011)? Following a very similar formula, this movie follows a couple of Judges (Dredd played by Carl Urban and rookie Anderson played by Olivia Thirlby) into a locked-down gang-controlled tower where they must use their wits and weapons to survive and serve justice.

Reception at…

The only things I knew about Stardust going into the film were that it was called Stardust and it was released in 2007. It’s virtually an “un-hyped” movie. But does this fairy tale romance with an overdramatic soundtrack deserve the lack of enthusiasm it has mustered over the last decade? It’s time to find out.

The Story

At first blush the plot sounds a little stale and overused, but the script has enough twists and turns that I found the…

The Master is a masterfully made drama written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

The film follows Joaquin Phoenix as Freddy, a WWII veteran who spends most of his time concocting the most disgusting looking hootch brought to cinema, assaulting department store patrones, and panting after various women both real or made of sand. He has no qualms with following all of his basest instincts to get what he wants even if it forces him to bounce from job to…

For a film that’s 2 hours and 42 minutes long you’d think they’d have time to actually develop characters beyond the someone who has the dimensionality of a cardboard cutout.

You’d be wrong.

For all it’s faults, Avatar holds up on a few specific points, but watching this film 10 years after it’s massive debut is a complete letdown and arguably a poor use of an evening. Let’s look at the specifics.

The film begins with a bunch of scientific…

To say that there was controversy about Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law before it hit theaters in 2009 is an understatement. This was when imdb.com or the International Movie Database online still had vibrant forums for discussion on each film, which they’ve since nixed.

The most hotly debated topic was whether the film was canon or not, that is, whether it followed the popular stories written by Sir Conan Doyle. Ritchie claimed that his…

When I saw the previews for this movie, I remember thinking how timely this topic was considering the U.S. was dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis and financial recession. Like the book series it’s based on, Shopaholic takes on the humor of finance and overspending. This is to its credit, because this film is to this day something I want to regularly rewatch, while I’ve all but forgotten the serious, dour films about the crisis, like Up…

Coraline is a stop motion masterpiece. The animation is captivating. The story is intriguing. There’s a talking cat.

The film is based off a Neil Gaiman book by the same title. The story follows a young girl named Coraline as she explores her new home. She finds a mysterious portal to mirror realm where everything is “perfect.” It’s all a ruse, though, and she has to complete a quest in order to save her parents and get back to the…

Up was Pixar’s 10th film. It was released in May of 2009 and was nominated for an Academy Award in 5 categories. It won in two: best animated feature and best original score.

Some animated films begin to show their age after 10 years, but Up is still as fresh as the first day in theaters. The animation style has a slight cartoon-ish feel but it still maintains a great deal of realism.

The setup to the film is a…