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Interview with Alex Garland, writer/director of Ex Machina
Alex Garland’s résumé reads like a laundry list of recent sci-fi and horror cult hits, with screenplay credits including 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), and Dredd (2012). His latest, Ex Machina, may stand to follow that same path of cult adoration – although hopefully for Garland, its box office will follow more in the footsteps of 28 Days Later than those of Dredd. The sparse, character-dr...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Furious 7 Bests Paul Blart
Even with three major debuts, very little can stop the car-crunching excess of Furious 7, which held the top spot at the box office yet again for a third week with an estimated $29.1 million. However, despite the fact the film has now made over a billion dollars in worldwide revenue, the weekend is beginning to show cracks, as second-place finisher Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 came close with an estimat...[Read More]
Movie Review: Unfriended
Computers have become an integral part of our lives, but movies still haven’t come up with an interesting way of depicting their use. The character hunched over his or her laptop has replaced the character poking away at a typewriter as the dullest “action” that can happen in a movie. Writer Nelson Greaves and director Levan Gabriadze light upon an innovative, if obvious, solution to the problem i...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Furious 7 Keeps On Trucking
It is only April, and already Furious 7 is on track to become the movie to beat in terms of sheer gross income. It dropped in revenue by nearly 60%, but an estimated $60.6 million is still more than most films make in their first weekend, let alone their second. It is by far the top earner of the top ten ($252.5 million domestic, $800.5 million worldwide), winning out handily against Home (estimat...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Furious 7 an April Success Story
For anyone who ever said sequels are tired, old, and only a matter of diminishing returns, there is the Fast and the Furious franchise. Only getting more and more critically acclaimed as each new entry comes out, the latest, Furious 7, not only did well with critics, but at an absolutely bang-up estimated weekend of $143.6 million broke numerous April box office records and is already poised to be...[Read More]
Movie Review: Furious 7
A movie like Furious 7 has a special sort of appeal. It is a formulaic thrill-ride plain and simple. Furious 7 is directed by James Wan who is far more famous for his horror films, Saw (2004), Insidious (2010), and The Conjuring (2013), than anything involving high-performance vehicles racing at insane speeds. Yet I can’t help but applaud a valuable franchise that decides to bring in new blood sho...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Box Office Goes (for) Home
Critics considered it decidedly average at best, but that did not stop DreamWorks’ latest effort Home from being the big box office winner of the weekend with an estimated $54 million. It, however, has a long way to go to make back its $135 million costs (and that includes foreign box office), while the similarly excoriated Get Hard, with Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, got an estimated $34.6 million...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Salvation
The Salvation is a revenge film so obsessed with the “revenge” part of its plot that you can practically feel the filmmakers salivating to get to the cathartic final shootout. (And yes, a better title for it might be The Salivation. This writer is self-respecting enough not to lead with that zinger, but not above putting it in a self-aware aside.) In so doing, the film makes for a rather pointed l...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Insurgent Surges, Gunman Lacks Caliber
With Young Adult fiction making good bank at the box office, it should be no surprise that the dystopian Divergent movies are moving along well with a first-place finish for The Divergent Series: Insurgent and an estimated $54 million to start the weekend right, even if critics are lambasting it. It is not getting as much flak as The Gunman; debuting in fourth with an estimated $5 million, the Sea...[Read More]
Movie Review: It Follows
Horror is the most formulaic genre in cinema – or, perhaps, simply the one in which filmmakers seem most willing to rely on formula. The genre often descends into a spiral of derivative shtick, with the occasional good or great film spawning ten knockoffs that then give rise to another fifty of their own imitators. See Paranormal Activity, a novel and creepy film (a Blair Witch Project copycat its...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Cinderella Has $70 Million Opening Ball
Sometimes, there is simply no winning against Disney and Buena Vista. The new, live action Cinderella proved a big boost to a flagging weekend box office, pulling in an estimated $70.1 million – a strong start against a $92 million budget. Nothing else even came close, with the Ed Harris/Liam Neeson thriller Run All Night opening with a rather weak $11 million estimate in comparison, and an unrepo...[Read More]