Broke, depressed, and exhausted, down on his luck eighties icon Jean Claude Van Damme returns home in search of sanctuary and a little privacy. Instead he finds himself embroiled in an international media circus when the local police mistakenly believe he is the mastermind behind a botched armed robbery turned siege at a local post office.
Click here to read the full review at Suite101.com.
2006
Starring: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightly, Orlando Bloom, Jack Davenport, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgard
Director: Gore Verbinski
Runtime: 150 minutes
Studio: Disney
Rating: PG-13
“Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, a pirate’s life for me.” That’s what Disney executives could be heard singing quietly to themselves in the run up to this highly anticipated sequel to the surprise smash hit of 2003. It must have seemed like an awful risk – basing a large budget film about a dead genre, starring some up and coming actors and based on a frankly crappy theme park ride in Orlando. It worked great guns though thanks mainly to the magic ingredient, Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. A magnificent ponsing prat who ram raided the film, swiping every scene as if it were swag and sailing off into the horizon with it. With the look of Mick Jagger and the brain-fried stagger of Keith Richards, Depp carried the film almost single-handed. But would the formula repeat itself a second time around?
2007
Starring: Toby Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Rosemary Harris, Bryce Dallas Howard, J.K. Simmons
Director: Sam Raimi
Runtime: 140 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Universal
Far more than Memorial Day, the end of the college semester or the sweltering sticky heat, the beginning of Summer is these days heralded in by one thing – the arrival of the tent pole blockbuster movie. With one of the most impressive slates of releases for many, many years 2007 boasted the likes of Transformers, Pirates 3, The Bourne Ultimatum and Die Hard 4 to look forward to, which meant Spidey had his work cut out to be crowned king of the franchise pile.
Almost all films begin to wane and lose their magic as they move beyond the sequel into the realm of the franchise. It is the inevitable law of diminishing returns. Oddly in this case, Spiderman 3 appears to go the other direction and in excess becomes a victim of its own success. Spiderman 2 was simply so good that poor Sam Raimi seems to have no idea just how to top it and by being entrenched with the idea of making this one bigger and better than anything we’ve ever seen seems to have lost sight of what that really means and settled on the concept of “more.” More story, more special effects, more characters, more villains. There are three villains here, four if you count evil Spiderman. Pick one, Mr. Raimi, or even two. Four is just too much, we don’t know how to handle it and apparently neither does he. On top of this we have to make room for Peter and M.J. and Aunt May, as well as all the returning support cast, along with a boatload new ones. It’s an ambitious, overreaching mess and Spiderman 3 sags badly with a bloated and indigestible story.
2006
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Parker Posey, Sam Huntington
Director: Bryan Singer
Runtime: 154 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: PG-13
A long-awaited project stuck in development for many years and then rescued at the eleventh hour by director Bryan Singer, who left the third X-Men film to take charge, only to find his thunder somewhat stolen in the belatedly resurrected superhero department by Batman Begins. Arriving the following summer just three weeks later than X:3, the film had a lot of expectations to satisfy, but comes over like the film that it is – one that has had way too many ideas rattling around inside itself for way too long.
Superman Returns is bloated, disjointed and my God is it long. 154 minutes should make fan boys jump for joy as they wet themselves at the prospect of plenty of room available for both exhilarating action and heart stopping romance, but instead we get nothing much of either. Singer is content to take his time, way too much time as it turns out, setting the story up for, well, we’re not really sure and if there is a primary problem with Superman Returns it would be the lack of cohesion and the absence of a strong narrative spine.
2005
Starring: Georgie Henley, Skander Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Liam Neeson, Tilda Swinton
Director: Andrew Adamson
Runtime: 143 minutes
Studio: Disney
Rating: PG-13
After the worldwide take of Lord of the Rings trilogy began to rival the GDP of most small countries, it was only a matter of time before other classic literary fantasies were trotted out for big screen makeover, and C.S Lewis’ enchanting mythological saga was at the head of the line. Already a classic television series in the United Kingdom, Disney was not stingy with the purse in an attempt to recreate the requisite sense of other world wonder and whimsy. Credit where credit is due, Narnia looks spectacular. Unfortunately the Mouse House failed miserably in almost every other measurable sense.
For the uninitiated, the story takes place during the Second World War. Four sibling children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are among the many evacuated from blitz ravaged London to the relative safety of the countryside. During a game of hide and seek at the stately home that now serves as theirs, Lucy climbs inside an old wardrobe and finds herself in the land of Narnia, where an evil witch has assumed control of the land and placed it under a spell of eternal winter. When the rest of the children join Lucy, they learn that their coming has been foretold and they must lead the army of Narnia in an effort to topple the White Witch and restore peace and prosperity to the land.
2004
Starring: Konstantin Khabensky, Vladamir Menshov, Valeri Zolotukhin, Mariya Poroshina, Yuri Kutsenko
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Runtime: 114 minutes
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Rating: R
Out performing Return of the King, Harry Potter and everything else to become the highest grossing domestic Russian feature of all time is no small achievement. It resulted in a respectable bidding war that ended with it being landed by Twentieth Century Fox and now it is finally here, and boy does it pack a wallop. A contemporary low budget surrealist horror film, it is the first adaptation for a best selling trilogy of novels by Sergi Lukyanenko, the second is already released in the home country and we should anticipate its arrival soon.
2007
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Sam Elliot, Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Donald Logue
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Runtime: 110 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: PG-13
Mark Steven Johnson has done a neat little job of carving out a niche for himself in the world where he is the undisputed master of his craft. Some people have a gift for playing the financial markets; others are great surgeons, that’s their gift. Mark writes and directs amazingly bad comic book films for a living. First he gave us Daredevil, then he brought Elektra to the big screen and now he delivers Ghost Rider to us. Thanks for that, Mark. Take a vacation, no we insist, you have earned it. Be sure to order your nachos plain when you buy a ticket for this, the cheese will drip right off the screen and into your lap.
It really is hard to do justice to just how horrendously bad the script here is; young Johnny Blaze is given a lecture by his father on the importance of good judgment as he takes a drag on a cigarette and coughs in distress. You couldn’t possibly imagine what news the doctors have a few scenes later. Johnny and his girl carve their names into a tree and agree to meet there the next day at noon and run away together forever. Hmmm, wonder how that will turn out? It appears nothing is too old stock or worn down to the bone (no pun intended) for this film.
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