Just like the horror genre as a whole, Gothic tales of murder and supernatural mayhem have their own set of themes and tropes that are commonly used to tell the story at hand. In Crimson Peak, director Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim, Hellboy) adheres to nearly all of them. Yet, despite the many tried-and-true story beats and haunting images, the film executes its narrative so artfully and meticulously that it warrants del Toro’s effort. Continue reading Review: ‘Crimson Peak’ Reaches But Falls Short of Greatness
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Review: ‘The Intern’ Is a Charming But Standard Comedy
Since the early 1980s, Nancy Meyers has been shaping the face of female-led comedies, with films like Baby Boom and Private Benjamin among her first projects as a screenwriter. By the time her directorial career really took off in the 2000s, Meyers had evolved her specialty to delving into the complex romantic lives of people of a certain age (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated). With The Intern, the writer/director finds the cross-section between these two eras of her storytelling career, with charming if uninspired results that should provide something for older and younger moviegoers alike.
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Review: ‘The Walk’ Shares a Tense, Inspiring Tale
Some moviegoers may bristle at films boasting that their stories are “based on” or “inspired by” a true story. Although the marketing tactic may be capitalizing on the intrigue that the big-screen tale is based — at least, in part — on actual people and events, this approach has become so overused by studios that many biopics wind up as cliché-ridden history lessons that ultimately have little new light to shed on a given topic. In the case of The Walk, director Robert Zemeckis — the man behind such cinematic classics as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump — cuts through to the heart of the story at hand, delivering a poignant message that deserves to be heard.
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