Posts Tagged ‘Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’

Hercules – Needs More Blood!

Posted 17 Aug 2014 — by contributor
Category Film Reviews, Member Movie Reviews, Movies I Got

By Mike Shaeffer

Hercules, USA, 2014

Directed by Brett Ratner

Hercules is not the cocky hero that believes he is destined to defeat any foe.  This is a weary mercenary-for-hire who is tired of tall tales and wants to score on one last mission so he can finally retire and be left alone. Action fans would look upon Brett Ratner’s X-Men 3 more fondly if no other X-men movies existed before or after it. Sadly, The Last Stand stands as the least enjoyable of the mutant franchise, and I attribute this largely to Ratner’s approach to action sequences. When he attaches himself to a solid story and a talented cast, he can churn out immensely watchable guilty pleasures like After the Sunset (2004) or the pilot to Prison Break, which hooked me into a hermit-like Netflix binge, burning through all four seasons in six weeks. So what about Ratner’s take on Hercules? The iconic lion’s head? Check. Dwayne Johnson dons the headgear like Riddick putting on his goggles just before opening up a can of whoop-ass, and you’ve got the familiar trope of a son struggling with who his father really is—see Superman, Simon Birch, Inception, The Empire Strikes Back, or even TV’s ArcherRead More

Ezra’s Top Ten Favorite Movies Of 2013

Posted 01 Mar 2014 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Didn't Get, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Behind the Candelabra is a delightfully decadent look at the life of Liberace, brilliantly played by Michael Douglas in one of his very best performances. Every year, I struggle with the relatively arbitrary process of ranking movies, so this year I’ve decided to do something a little different. Instead of a traditional Top Ten list, I’m grouping two thematically connected films together for each place on the list, resulting in a hopefully more interesting Top 20 list. I’ve also included a more traditional Top Ten below that, for all you “too long, didn’t read” folks. One final note before we get to the list: it should tell you a lot about my credibility as a film critic that I liked Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa more than most of the Academy Award Best Picture nominees for 2013.

10. THE WICKER MAN: FINAL CUT / JURASSIC PARK 3-D – BEST RE-RELEASES. Obviously, this category doesn’t really count, as both of these films were originally released decades ago, but I can’t deny that each of them provided one of the most enjoyable experiences I had in a movie theater in 2013. This new cut of the original 1973 classic The Wicker Man adds some nuance and more musical numbers to an already great film. Most crucially, it opens with a scene of Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) praying in church, emphasizing his piousness from the very start, which enriches the events to follow. Jurassic Park, on the other hand, is quite simply my favorite movie (it has the most dinosaurs in it – I rest my case), and seeing it on a big screen again, in 3-D no less, made me fall in love with it all over again.  Read More