The Reel World

In 1987 Fatal Attraction was released, and now decades later it is the go-to movie when discussing classic scorned women in cinematic history.  Now a new film is about to take the mantel for the greatest scorned female character, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Based off the widely successful novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is perhaps the most haunting film about marriage to ever hit the screen. Director David Fincher is no stranger to directing strong, self-sufficient women on the big screen; look at Panic Room and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- but Gone Girl is the closest he’s come to filming his masterpiece.

Stop-motion animation remains a rare treat, but your appreciation of the new film, The Boxtrolls, will likely fall into an either love-it or hate-it camp. I will tell you which camp I fall into shortly. Laika Entertainment Studios produced Coraline and Paranorman, which were both oddball stop-motion fun that I enjoyed immensely. The stop-motion process is a dying art that is only rarely attempted any more, but it is widely beloved by film fans. The stop-motion work in The Boxtrolls is excellent. The cast of voice-over actors are excellent as well. The roster includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning and Tracy Morgan.

The eyes are the window to the soul, or so we have been told. I Origins is about a scientist studying the evolution of sight in organisms. Part of his research seems to be focused on countering creationists who claim that eyes are an obvious indication of a creator in life on this planet. The scientist, Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is working on proof that the development of eyes is a process of evolution. His new research assistant, Karen (Brit Marling) surprises Ian with intuitive brilliance and fanatical commitment to the task.

“Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer.”

That familiar classified ad — which receives a clever update toward the end of this film — and a hero named “Robert McCall” are about the only things this bloody, big-screen adaptation has in common with the TV show that (allegedly) inspired it. And that's fine, especially when you consider a large portion of this movie's audience is probably not slavishly devoted to a CBS crime drama from the 1980s. (Assuming they've seen it at all.) The bigger issue is that, beyond it starring one of the world's best and most charismatic movie stars, there's not a ton that's new or particularly interesting about The Equalizer.

What if two radio guys sat around and made up a movie on the air? In this case, it actually wasn't radio guys, because they weren't broadcasters, but podcasters. I guess the fine distinction between broad and pod is that pod goes out to the world through the internet. It's kind of like Indie radio. Kevin Smith is a very indie guy and even calls his podcast a smodcast. Smith and his buddy, producer Scott Mosier, were doing their smodcast and talking about a post on GumTree.uk about roommate advertisements. It evolved into crazy talk about what might happen.

Martin McDonagh is an extremely important and respected playwright. He is also a pretty good filmmaker. His films are In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. His plays have won too many awards to mention, but some of the titles are The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West, The Pillowman, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Skull of Connemara and others. His brother is John Michael McDonagh, the writer/director of The Guard and Calvary. All of these works are very good. Calvary might be my favorite.

The pleasure of The November Man is seeing an ex-James Bond come out of retirement being all cool and mean and efficiently lethal. The ex-James Bond is Pierce... Pierce Bronson. He's not as old as Sean Connery, but he's pretty old, and too old to look this good killing people. The November Man is nothing but a cheap and easy, end-of-August bit of popcorn fodder, but it works well. It works so well it already has a sequel planned. I don't think the budget on this is very large, so it probably was a no-brainer. The locations are all over middle Europe and Russia, but I think that's cheaper than New York City or London.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For marks the return of the iconic graphic novel since it first splashed across the big screen in 2005.  Sin City set out to make the ultimate comic book adaption in which the audience would see the panels move directly from the page and onto the screen.  For me Sin City was a celluloid masterpiece that blended the Noir stories beautifully with all the Hollywood tricks that were at Robert Rodriguez’s disposal.  Frank Miller’s beautiful black and white imagery was more striking than I could have imagined, and it was the film that had me rooting for the big lug Marv (played by Mickey Rourke who seems to have been born for the role).

“Welcome to the 21st century!”

Sylvester Stallone has dedicated the better part of the last decade to giving moviegoers what they wanted 20 years ago. It started with 2006's Rocky Balboa, which closed out Stallone's signature franchise in the satisfying manner fans have been craving since 1990's Rocky V debacle. We’ve also gotten another Rambo sequel, as well as long-awaited team ups with icons both real (Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan) and cinematic (Grudge Match was “Rocky vs. Raging Bull”). But Stallone's biggest recent success is the veritable fantasy team of action stars he's assembled for the Expendables films.

“Are you telling me that the fate of thirty million inhabitants is in the hands of these criminals?”

Now that we are in the middle of phase two of Marvel’s movie universe, a new batch of characters have been given a movie of their own to help set the stage for what is to come in the ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe.  The Guardians of the Galaxy announcement for many left fans scratching their heads; after all, just how would a talking raccoon, a lumbering tree and various other space aliens fit in