“We used to look up in the sky and wonder about our place in the stars,” grumbles actor Matthew McConaughey as Interstellar’s former astronaut and reluctant farmer, Cooper. “Now we just look down and wonder about our place in the dirt.” He could as well be talking about the film itself, which
Browsing: Lance Harris
A harrowing dark comedy about a collapsed marriage. A savage satire of media sensationalism. A meticulous police procedural. And a sleek neo-noir thriller. Gone Girl from director David Fincher confidently splices
Sony’s PlayStation 4 (PS4) has sold more than 10m units to consumers since its launch in November last year, while Microsoft’s Xbox One has struggled to muster 5m sales to retailers during the same time. Is Microsoft still being unfairly punished for
In The Equalizer, the life of a Russian mafia henchman is nasty, brutish, short, and often terminated at the sharp end of a gardening tool wielded by its 60-year old star, Denzel Washington. As a retired secret service operative who protects the helpless
Based on a relatively obscure crew of characters in the Marvel comic book universe and made for a reputed budget of US$170m, Guardians of the Galaxy qualifies as a brave bet in today’s world of blockbuster film-making. It’s an exuberant B-movie with A-scale production values; a goofy cosmic adventure that disarms cynicism through
Though it’s not directly based on a videogame, the new Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow nails the aesthetics and feel of one more accurately than any film to come before it. It’s a variant on the Normandy landing level so favoured by designers of first-person shooters, but handled with enough
Forget the powers of Marvel’s mutated superheroes in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The most astonishing feat in the film is the effortless way that director Bryan Singer juggles a massive ensemble cast, races across multiple cities and countries, and zigzags between two timelines
In the 2014 reboot of Godzilla, the venerable giant lizard battles mutos (or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) while the script’s somber tone wages war with the ridiculousness of its underlying premise. In both clashes, the human characters seem to be there mostly as spectators who run, scream and open their eyes in widened terror
With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, director David Lowery set out to create a film that would make the audience “feel like they’ve just heard an old folk song that they’d never heard before”. The notes of his ballad of doomed love are as stirringly familiar as he had hoped — yet they’re arranged and performed in a way that makes them feel utterly
Following last year’s entertaining but somewhat rote Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3, Marvel has kicked off 2014’s annual blockbuster season with one of its best pictures to date. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a witty, snappily paced hybrid of spy thriller and comic book mayhem. The sequel to Captain America