Tag: idris elba

Screening Room: ‘Molly’s Game’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

West Wing and The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut is a smart and fast-paced fact-based drama about an ex-Olympic skier who ends up running high-stakes poker games only to get taken down by the FBI.

Molly’s Game stars the incomparable pair of Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba (above) and opens on Christmas Day. My review is at PopMatters:

Chances are, we will never see a heartwarming Aaron Sorkin movie about somebody with a learning disability or severe handicap they had to overcome. This is for the best. The most caffeinated major American screenwriter, Sorkin only seems to find his voice when inhabiting a frantically energetic persona whose thoughts outrun their ability to verbalize and emote them. The start of his latest movie, Molly’s Game, is so resolutely Sorkin-esque that it’s almost a self-parody. Only this time, like most of his better work, it’s based on a true story…

Screening Room: ‘The Dark Tower’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment

A mash-up of elements from the novels in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower fantasy series, the movie of the same name is hitting screens tomorrow after a long and convoluted production history. Theoretically, it’s the kickoff for a TV series to follow next year.

My review is at Film Journal International:

According to what little mythology the script provides, the title’s looming structure isn’t just a tower, it’s a linchpin holding the entire fabric of reality together. If anything happens to the Tower, then the hosts of ravening Lovecraftian beasties lurking beyond the Tower-guarded boundaries of the universe will destroy everything. At least, that’s how Roland the Gunslinger (Idris Elba), a stoic warrior tasked with protecting the Tower, explains it to Jake (Tom Taylor), a New York kid whose parents thought he was insane because of all his visions he was having of Roland, the Tower and a frightening Man in Black…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Pacific Rim’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

PACIFIC RIM

Guillermo del Toro’s robots vs. monsters movie Pacific Rim is now playing just about everywhere. The writing is superfluous and the characters thin, but at least when the audience laughs it’s with the film and not at it.

pacificrim-posterMy review is at Short Ends & Leader:

In the case of Pacific Rim, what del Toro wanted to do was create a scenario in which giant robots get to slug it out with monsters. In the ocean. With swords and plasma cannons. The setup is handled somewhat clumsily at the start by a narration that continually emphasizes the “we” of humanity (the film is a throwback to the old style of kaiju and disaster films, where people put national differences aside and work together). Long, scaly, Cloverfield-type beasts are crawling out of a hellish interdimensional gash on the ocean floor and laying waste to coastal cities around the Pacific Rim. They’re actually called kaiju, in case you didn’t get what del Toro was going for.

To fight back, huge Robotech-styled vehicles called Jaegers (German for hunter or fighter) were built. The Jaegers are directed by two pilots who sit inside the giant head, stuck in a mind-meld virtual reality that’s made that much more effective when the two have some emotional connection. The film’s putative hero, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam, a study in blankness), loses his co-pilot and brother in the opening battle scenes, and only reluctantly returns to fight at humanity’s last stand in Hong Kong…

Check out the trailer: