REVIEW: Battleship [2012]

“It’s the North Koreans—I’m tellin’ ya” Screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber actually made paying Hasbro a boatload of cash for their seemingly unnecessary board game property a relevant story point in their big budget, science fiction actioner Battleship. The fact they had to conjure up a humanoid alien race with reptilian characteristics and cloaking technology to keep gigantic flying nautical vessels off radar is beside the point. The American public loves extra-terrestrial invasions, thinks Andy Roddick’s wife Brooklyn Decker is hot, and can’t help getting revved up when their armed…

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REVIEW: The Avengers [2012]

“In the end you’ll always kneel” It’s hard to believe the new Marvel cinematic canon began just four years ago—if anything just for the simple fact these actors have been contractually obligated to continuously work in the world for its duration. The new The Incredible Hulk released with much less poetic atmosphere and more action-based aesthetic akin to the universe the studio now wished to portray than Ang Lee‘s foray from 2003 and a comic tone was cemented in arguably the series’ best entry, Iron Man. Subsequently followed by Thor,…

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REVIEW: The Cabin in the Woods [2012]

“He has the husband bulge” After reading all the Twitter hoopla and angry comments about spoilers, I thought The Cabin in the Woods was going to have some amazing, unforeseen twist to do more than just bend genres like we all knew it would. I made sure to avoid all reviews and news, retaining my fresh, untainted mind that yearned to be excited, perplexed, and possibly even confused. And then the opening scene rendered any ideas of being kept in the dark moot as Sitterson (Richard Jenkins), Hadley (Bradley Whitford),…

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REVIEW: The Hunger Games [2012]

“Thank you for your consideration” Underdogs thrive on the ability to retain hope in a world forever shoving them into a corner without the reality of upward mobility or a true chance at overall social change. When they start to believe their numbers can actually overcome that adversity, however, the ruling class must take notice and ready for a fight they may not win. Rebellion will forever be a threat whether one has been squashed in the past or not since you can only kick the underprivileged masses down so…

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REVIEW: John Carter [2012]

“Vir-gin-ya, Vir-gin-ya, Vir-gin-ya!” When you’re working from a novel written almost a century ago about a planet we still have yet to truly discover, it would be easy to find yourself going off track onto a cheesy, archaic path of exposition. John Carter is not without its moments of superfluity and at over two hours in length does at times find itself sprawling out into an epic beyond the needs of the story being told. However, writer/director Andrew Stanton and company still manage to intrigue with their desert wasteland of…

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REVIEW: In Time [2011]

“Your mind can be spent even if your body’s not” A watered-down Gattaca from the same creative mind, Andrew Niccol‘s In Time takes his human story of survival onto a global level. Rather than watch one man succeed in following an unattainable dream by taking the charity of another no longer wanting the gifts he was born with, we experience an entire dystopia’s upheaval. This world isn’t about a genetic propensity for excellence; it’s about time ticking down for the poor and being muted for the rich. Living in the…

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REVIEW: Chronicle [2012]

“What does seriously mean?” It’s not an easy feat to take prevalent Hollywood tropes and make them fresh, unique, and exciting, but director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis—son of John—somehow found a way in their feature length debut Chronicle. Utilizing the in-fashion idea of regular kids discovering superpowers—see “Heroes”, “Misfits”, Push, or even X-Men: First Class—and placing it inside the found footage genre, these young filmmakers are able to keep things both comically relevant and darkly tragic at the same time. When watching the trailer, you may assume this…

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REVIEW: 鋼の錬金術師 嘆きの丘(ミロス)の聖なる星 [Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos] [2011]

“The myths of the Milosian people are stained in blood” Anime truly is a breed of its own and a genre not to be trifled with by the weak at heart. Just take the popular saga of “Fullmetal Alchemist” and the amount of work created from Hiromu Arakawa‘s world. Spawning two separate television series adapted from the same original manga, both incarnations were also graced with a film to accompany their parallel journeys of the brothers Elric—Edward and Alphonse. Whereas Conqueror of Shamballa trailed the original run as a wrap…

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REVIEW: Serenity [2005]

“Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down” Seven years after hitting the theatre cold to watch what appeared to be a unique sci-fi space western, Joss Whedon‘s Serenity proves much more powerful and lush with a couple “Firefly” viewings under my belt. The film that should not have been—Fox unceremoniously canceled the television series despite fan protest post-Season One—stands on its own as a mere shadow of its potential without the contextual details of the titular spaceship and crew living inside so I implore you…

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REVIEW: Attack the Block [2011]

“They’re four foot high, blind, n’ got kicked to def by a bunch a kids. We got nuthin’ to worry ’bout” After the extraordinary success Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s Shaun of the Dead’s comedy/horror mash-up found internationally, it’s no surprise their friend Joe Cornish’s feature directorial debut has achieved equally staggering results. Attack the Block is a mix of horror, comedy, and science fiction as it depicts a gang of adolescent hoodlums taking on an alien invasion in Brixton, South London. Right after the kids mug a young nurse…

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REVIEW: Tin Can [2011]

“Like a corpse in a coffin” After settling her family in Vermont, I doubt actress Logan Howe ever expected to convert a one-car garage into a spaceship headed for Mars like she did with her directorial debut Tin Can. A dark science fiction puzzler written by Steve Maas, the micro-budgeted film needed the inspired art direction of reappropriated electronic junk to come to life. Modeled after Robert Zubrin’s hypothetical design from The Case for Mars, the practicality of this ship’s centrifugal force physics are glossed over in lieu of watching…

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