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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
27867 |
| Total Ratings: |
245769 |
| Total Reviews: |
26601 |
![[133209311 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?133209311)
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| MAPS TO THE STARS |
"Should have stayed off the map."
Jay Seaver says... "Hollywood stories can be self-indulgent or snide, depending on what sort of axes the people making them have to grind, rarely managing to hit the sweet spot in the middle. What they seldom are, though, is extraneous, but that's what happens with "Maps to the Stars" - there's one track that's a nifty little story with some potential. Whenever it gets into stuff that's specifically about the movie business, on the other hand, one can't help but be reminded that David Cronenberg used to make things far more original than this." (more)
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| SNOW GIRL AND THE DARK CRYSTAL |
"I'm not sure what's going on here, but it looks great."
Jay Seaver says... "Maybe the best way to describe "Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal" (to give it the full name that appears on-screen) is to imagine if Ray Harryhausen had been born in China, making the sort of weird fantasies that were popular in Hong Kong in the 1970s, only he had access to twenty-first century CGI and performance capture. It's rough and all over the place, but also a fair amount of fun." (more)
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| LA MALA, A |
"Cute, not cruel."
Jay Seaver says... "There are a lot of romantic comedies that start from from premises as ludicrous as that of "A la Mala", but few of them do as well in selling that starting point. It's a goofy little thing, but it's got a cute couple at the center and makes enough nimble steps along the way to be a great deal of fun." (more)
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| FOCUS (2015) |
"No "Maudlin's Eleven""
Peter Sobczynski says... ""Focus" is a film in which Will Smith plays an ultra-slick con man who embarks on an elaborate scheme to relieve someone with more money than common sense of millions of dollars utilizing charm, bluster and a story that even the most gullible of individuals might find themselves questioning at times if it was put forth to them. (No, there is no truth to the rumor that it was originally intended to be titled "The Making of After Earth.") In theory, this sounds like it might have the makings for a reasonably diverting night at the movies but somewhere along the lines between conception and execution, something clearly went horribly wrong because the end result is a smug, soulless and deeply annoying contraption that spends too much time trying to throw its increasingly implausible narrative curveballs at the audience and not nearly enough time giving them a story or characters that they can invest enough interest in so that they can at least be somewhat surprised by the relentless rug-pulling on display." (more)
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| TRIUMPH IN THE SKIES |
"Well, at least break-even in the skies."
Jay Seaver says... "There's a shiny new Shaw Brothers logo among the vanity cards before "Triumph in the Skies", likely because it's a spinoff of a TV show that ran on Hong Kong's TVB network, which was also founded by the late Sir Run Run Shaw, about ten years ago. It's the furthest thing from the grindhouse action that the name conjures for Western audiences, a slick modern-day drama that plays well enough for those who haven't seen the series and probably a bit better for those who have." (more)
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| HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 |
"Louper."
Brett Gallman says... "Confession: I’ve seen “Hot Tub Time Machine” an absurd number of times during the past five years. Let's just say I've watched it more than I've watched anything else released during that time span. This is an important caveat to keep in mind when I say its follow-up is pretty funny in spite of itself." (more)
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| DUFF, THE |
"a.k.a. Her?"
Peter Sobczynski says... ""The Duff" is a film that wants to be two very different things--it wants to be a smart and super-snarky teen comedy in mode of "Heathers," "Mean Girls" and "Easy A" and it wants to be a super-sincere story dedicated to exposing the cruelties of cyber-bullying, the importance of being yourself and other sentiments more suited for a public service announcement than a night at the multiplex. Mind you, there two approaches are not inherently impossible to merge into one but to pull them both off would require some especially nimble and nuanced storytelling to navigate that exceedingly thin line between satire and sincerity without making a mess of things. Give the makers of "The Duff" some credit for not keeping viewers in suspense for too long because it pretty much trips over that line and makes a spectacular and spectacularly bad embarrassment of itself long before the running time as crossed over into double digits. Although it clearly wants to be seen as a corrective to the usual cynically contrived teen trash nonsense, this is a film that feels as if it was made by and for that infamous focus group that decided that Andie should go off with the loathsome-but-handsome Blaine instead of the slightly-less-loathsome-but-geeky Ducky at the end of "Pretty in Pink."" (more)
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| HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL, THE |
"It's a gimmick, but it's a good one."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT THE 2015 BOSTON SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL: Mock documentaries are inherently gimmick movies; it is a rare one that does not crash hard up against the form's limitations, and when that happens, it doesn't matter whether the disappointment comes from the filmmaker having to cheat or the presentation just fizzling out. "The History of Time Travel" inevitably paints itself into a corner, but unlike most cases, that's where it wants to be." (more)
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CRITICWATCH - QUOTE WHORES COME INTO FOCUS IN 2015
by Erik Childress |
| "Will Smith is back in theaters this weekend after almost two years off - not counting his career-defining cameo as Satan in last year's Winter's Tale. Criticwatch is also back after a rather slow 2014 on the article front but just a couple of months off since announcing last year's quote whores of the year and offering another retrospective on why Peter Travers and Pete Hammond should not be read, heard or seen in any capacity. Especially when they are using their words. More on them at another time. This week though we are on alert about this week's ads for Focus which once again sees the same ol' whores up to their same 'ol tricks." (more) |
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'AFTER THIS MOVIE I WANTED TO KILL BABIES.'
- Max Bernstein, On "Baby Geniuses"
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