A culture change is clearly taking place at DreamWorks Animation. After spending years making films that made lots of money but had no soul, the studio slowly but surely began making smarter films and, for the first time ever, one of their films outclassed a Pixar movie released in the same year (“Kung Fu Panda 2” vs. “Cars 2”). The first two films in the “Madagascar” franchise were definitely products of the old regime; there was lots of busyness, but little to sink one’s teeth into. When grown-ups dismiss animated films as kid’s movies, it’s movies like “Madagascar” and its…
Author: David Medsker
“Men in Black 3” suffers from many of the same problems that plagued another recent release, “Dark Shadows.” Both movies have difficulty finding the right balance between wacky and serious; unlike “Dark Shadows,” though, “Men in Black 3” still manages to be entertaining, even when the movie turns into the 2000 thriller “Frequency” in the third act. It is by no means perfect, but is able to overcome its faults thanks to two game-saving performances by the supporting cast. The movie begins with Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), the last of an alien race that consumes planets, escaping from his…
You’re going to read a lot of not very nice things about “Dark Shadows” on these here interwebs – including this – and while they are not without cause, let’s set something straight: this movie was positively bursting with potential. It’s a film adaptation of a daytime soap opera from the ‘60s and ‘70s that involved the supernatural, time travel and parallel universes (bonus points for being way ahead of the curve), with Tim Burton directing and Johnny Depp starring as a vampire. On paper, that’s a home run, but they don’t play the games on paper. There is a…
The fanboys were positively deafening when Marvel announced that Joss Whedon, creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” would be directing “The Avengers.” One cartoonist even joked that Whedon would try to shoehorn a “Buffy”-esque analogy about the movie’s villain being more metaphorical than literal, and that the studio would fire him before he shot a single frame. What those people overlooked is that Whedon excels at writing for an ensemble cast, and that he has other voices in his dialogue bag besides snarky teen. If anything, he was an inspired choice to write and direct “The Avengers”; the…
As film adaptations of young adult novels go, you’d be hard pressed to find one as ballsy as “The Hunger Games.” There is so much money on the line with this film – especially considering that parent studio Lionsgate bid a reluctant farewell to the “Saw” franchise only a little over a year ago, and could use another cash cow – and yet nearly everything about its execution flies in the face of standard Hollywood protocol. They hired a director who hasn’t helmed a film since 2003, and he shot it like he’s Ang Lee on vacation in the Appalachian…
No pleasure comes from saying unkind words about a movie like “John Carter.” It does what all good films should do: it dreams impossibly big. You can practically see director Andrew Stanton geeking out as he assembles those sweeping shots of the moving city of Zodanga as it ravages the Martian landscape. What undoes Stanton’s visual spectacle is the same thing that tripped up “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”: the source material is awfully pulpy, convoluted and underwritten at the same time. It’s easy to be fascinated with how “John Carter” looks, but it’s difficult to…
“Friends with Kids” is an anomaly in a number of ways. The concepts of love, marriage and parenthood, and how they ebb and flow at different times, are incredibly complex, and Jennifer Westfeldt’s script, which she also directed, handles them admirably, asking the tough questions while maintaining a light tone in the dialogue. At the same time, the movie is a fairy tale; the two main characters do something that no two people should ever, ever do, and the ending bridges a wide emotional gap that is hard to overlook. Even if you’re happy about how things turn out, it…
You can see why CGI animators are interested in adapting Dr. Seuss’ work. His characters and landscapes are a production designer’s wet dream, sporting a unique, immediately recognizable style with rarely a right angle in sight. The stories, however, are another matter; no one is going to sit through 90 minutes of rhyming, especially when the characters have no back story to speak of. Sensing the potential for trouble, Illumination shrewdly recruited several of the people responsible for Fox’s adaptation of “Horton Hears a Who” to shepherd “The Lorax,” and the move pays off, even if the movie is too…
What every director of a horror film or supernatural thriller needs to remember is that you don’t need to tell the audience when to be scared, because when the moment comes, they’ll know what to do. Horror takes discipline, not a noisy score. The scariest moments in film history are most often the quietest ones. (See: the clown in “Poltergeist.”) This is a mistake that “The Woman in Black” makes again and again, setting up the big ‘boo’ with something small, and then following it with the big red herring crash. The story is actually a compelling one, but the…
Man, could this movie have benefited from a little misdirection. “Man on a Ledge” has an interesting story at its core, but plays its hand way too soon. Had they split up the two story lines so that they took place back to back instead of side by side, “Ledge” would have had a much better chance at becoming the movie it clearly wants to be, which is the next “Inside Man.” Instead, they went the linear route, which renders the plot toothless. A man checks into the Roosevelt Hotel, eats a very fancy lunch, leaves a note, and walks…