Jan 22
Source Code is a ridiculous film in a lot of ways and it doesn’t make much sense. Directed by Duncan Jones, it’s a movie that’ll make you think and ask a lot of questions. It just doesn’t seem to have the answers, which can potentially be part of the fun. The cast works exuberantly to cover up the holes and the Ben Ripley script is amusingly urgent in its unveiling of plot mechanics (and subsequent plot holes).
It’s taken me a little while to get going with film reviewing this year for some reason. I don’t really have an explanation for it, but I’m hoping to pick up the pace and hit the gas for more writing in the near future. In that regard, I decided to finally check out The Fast and the Furious. I’ve seen bits and pieces of other films in the series on cable and so on, but I’ve never actually seen the 2001 flick that started it all.
It’s time to get back into the swing of things with 2011 in the bag and a blossoming 2012 underway, so I decided to start with Nowhere to Run. Yep, the Jean-Claude Van Damme flick. I remember first seeing this maybe a year or two after it dropped on VHS. It was promoted as Van Damme’s big “acting” movie, with less martial arts and more resolute squints.
What can one really say about a movie like Conan the Barbarian, by Crom? This 2011 flick is not a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and is, for all intents and purposes, a reworking of the mythology. Robert E. Howard originally created the character of Conan the Barbarian in the 1930s in a series that was published in a magazine called Weird Tales.
An uncompromising and blood-spattered experience, Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is a samurai epic for the ages. The film brims with violence and energy, but it also explores what duty means and what it means to be a ruler. The picture is particularly perceptive within the context of social and political unrest around the world, as many “servants” are asking some serious questions about the quality of their rulers.
