REVIEW: Elvis [2022]

He was a taste of forbidden fruit. There’s a lot to talk about when dealing with Elvis Presley. Too much for one film to do him justice. That’s why Baz Luhrmann (who writes with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner) decides to tell someone else’s story instead: that of Colonel Tom Parker, the self-proclaimed “Snowman” who discovered the King and helped make him an American icon. Unfortunately, he also probably played the biggest role in killing him thanks to the pills and injections necessary to keep Elvis on-stage and…

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REVIEW: Mission: Impossible II [2000]

Who wants to be decent? It shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen the movie to read a 2016 interview and learn how screenwriter Robert Towne came aboard John Woo‘s Mission: Impossible II after the big action sequences were already set in stone. His job was to therefore connect those choreographed behemoths into a cohesive enough story to invest audiences beyond the requisite quick-cut fisticuffs and volatile explosions. Towne was more or less set-up to fail and there’s nobody but Tom Cruise to blame, especially since the two worked together to bring…

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REVIEW: Sanctum [2011]

“Ah … that’s not a wizard” Who knew the best way to connect an emotionally estranged father and son was to trap them inside an unmapped cave with few materials, an abundance of frenzied spelunkers, and only the hope that the river rising to suffocate them will lead to the ocean and freedom? Inspired by true events, I guess maybe I shouldn’t make light of the situation, especially since John Garvin and Andrew Wight’s screenplay contains many deaths, but I can’t look past the rather convenient way such astronomical odds…

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