The Smackdown Since a lot of romantic comedies have a wedding somewhere in the film, the reasoning must go, why not have an entire movie about them? From “The Wedding Singer” to “Wedding Crashers” to […]
The Smackdown Few events test character like a crisis close to home. A pair of recent low-key films (both now being mailed to Academy members around Hollywood) address the issue of family members succumbing to […]
Both the hotly-promoted “The Bucket List” and the below-the-radar “Bubba Ho-Tep” feature a pair of geriatric geezers (one white, one black) undertaking adventure in the twilight of their lives in a search to give meaning to what went before. Both films are entertaining, but can the big budget, major studio offering with an “A List” cast and a big name director trump a small, independently-made gem based on a Bram Stoker Award nominated short story? Can Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman best Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis? Is gallimaufry globetrotting more poignant than fighting giant roaches in Nacogdoches? Will the Hollywood-based screenwriter from NYU’s film school hold his own against the Mojo Storyteller from the Big Thicket in East Texas? In short, will “The Bucket List” command as fervent and as loyal a following as “Bubba Ho-Tep?” Will the questions ever stop…
[…]
Even as the Golden Globes were falling apart over the on-going WGA strike, the show at tonight’s 13th Annual The Critics Choice Awards managed to go on because the event is put on by the […]
The Smackdown Here are two films from director Mike Nichols which, even looking in the rear-view mirror of history, have a lot to say about the human cost of invasion in Afghanistan and a national […]
The Smackdown So fellow critic Mark Sanchez has already put Tim Burton’s 2007 adaptation of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street†up against its theatrical predecessor, and declared Burton’s version victorious. But how […]
The Smackdown Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but parody sits you on the whoopee cushion. That prospect faces any movie taking itself too seriously. Film biographies routinely serve up large doses of […]
From the Editor | Bryce Zabel The results are in from our 2007 Christmas season Santa Smackdown where each of ten critics put forward their favorite Christmas film, and we let our readers vote. As […]
The Smackdown Hand it to filmmaker Tim Burton for audacity. It’s career-defining / career-threatening to revamp an acknowledged masterwork like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This operatic tale of bloody revenge earned […]
Don’t you just hate it when flesh-eating zombies force you to stay home at night like some kind of shut-in?
Richard Matheson’s original 1954 novel, I Am Legend, put ideas into the 50s zeitgeist that have stayed with us, spawned spin-offs, rip-offs and re-makes. Even horror master Stephen King was influenced mightily by it. After years of starting and stopping, they finally got a film in theaters that used the original, powerful title that the writer himself felt was appropriate for his work.
That film is, of course, I Am Legend. It follows a lineage of trying to adapt the brilliant original literary vision to film with spotty success (at least, critically); from the 60s version made in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis; to the 70s version where Charlton Heston brought his post-Planet of the Apes sci-fi cred to the endeavor; to this post-millennial version which wants to do what all the others set out to do but fell short of, but with today’s fears, not yesterday’s. These are three films that say as much about who we were at the time of their production as they do about the actual films themselves. One thing they prove, however, is that flesh-eating zombies just never go out of style. […]
Copyright © 2024 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes