Ebert Did It Better: Gasbag Reviews

Category: Action

  • Pompeii is just a flaming heap

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    Pompeii – 2014 Director Paul W.S. Anderson Starring Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Carrie-Anne Moss, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Jared Harris, Kiefer Sutherland Screenplay Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, Michael Robert Johnson Many fault Paul W.S. Anderson for bringing the inspired collaboration of Alien vs. Predator to an almost screeching halt.  It’s true that the 2004 film performed well below expectations, it really wasn’t nearly as…

  • Out of the Furnace The fire’s gone

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    Out of the Furnace – 2013 Director Scott Cooper Starring Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard Screenplay Brad Ingelsby and Cooper “He might be safer over in Iraq” It’s hard to recall the last movie that featured common folk in Steel Mill country of Pennsylvania that started out with anything close to a sunny day.…

  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier – The enemy is not us

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    Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 2014 Director Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Hayley Atwell, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson Screenplay by Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely Watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a special kind of thrill.  In the small town of Seaside Oregon, Grouchnapper and I walked into a box theater which had less…

  • The Family: Not everything’s alright

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    The Family – 2013 Director Luc Besson Starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dianna Agron, Tommy Lee Jones, John D’Leo Writers Besson and Michael Caleo Fading are the days in which Robert DeNiro commanded the screen.  The script of The Family goes so far as to describe his use of the “F”-word at the expense of actually seeing him use it.…

  • 47 Ronin is not quite enough when you have too many F/X

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    47 Ronin – 2013 Director Carl Rinsch Starring Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada, Kou Shibasaki, Tadanobu Asano, Min Tanaka, Jin Akanishi, Masayoshi Haneda, Hiroshi Sogabe, Neil Fingleton, Takato Yonemoto, Hiroshi Yamada, Shu Nakajima, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Rinko Kikuchi, Yorick van Wageningen, Rick Genest Writer Chris Morgan, Hossein Amini The late Sam Kinison had a routine regarding Jim and Tammy Faye Baker’s take on Christianity in which he, as the voice of God, feigns a search through…

  • Machete Kills (*): Garbage in…garbage out

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    Machete Kills – 2013 Director Robert Rodriguez Starring Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofía Vergara, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Lady Gaga, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Walt Goggins, William Sadler, Demián Bichir, Mel Gibson Screenplay Kyle Ward “I have high hopes for you, Mr. Machete.  Higher than you can mentally ascend to.” Ah, Machete.  Ah, humanity. The first thing we see in Machete Kills is a trailer indicating that…

  • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Opportunity Lost and Exhausted

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    The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – 2013 Director Peter Jackson Starring Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom, Aidan Turner Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Phillippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro based on the book The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien I can remember when I first saw the movie Star Wars: Attack of the…

  • Escape Plan (***): Character actors beware

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      Escape Plan – 2013 Director Mikael Håfström Starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Vinnie Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio, Amy Ryan, Sam Neill, Faran Tahir Screenplay Miles Chapman, Jason Keller Having skipped many of Sylvester Stallone’s mid ’80’s early ’90’s fare, such as Over The Top, Lock Up, Cobra, Oscar, Stop! or my Mom will Shoot, etc., I sometimes wondered if…

  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (***1/2) more hunger, more games

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      The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – 2013 Director Francis Lawrence Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Donald Sutherland Screenplay Simon Beaufoy, Michael deBruyn based on the book by Suzanne Collins After struggling through the first book of the series, The Hunger Games, I was not looking forward to the movie…

  • The Purge: If everything was just so…

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    The Purge – 2013 Written & Directed by James DeMonaco Starring Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis Dystopian stories are often made with some political point in mind.  The author generally feels that we have valued something in society that not only could cause our destruction, but will be overlooked to the point of…