TIFF REVIEW: The Predator [2018]

Did I say that out loud? Writer Shane Black had a good year in 1987. He burst onto the action screenwriting scene with Lethal Weapon. Co-wrote the cult classic children versus Universal monsters fantasy The Monster Squad with Fred Dekker. And landed a supporting role in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Predator as an exfil team member unwittingly embroiled in a fight against an alien hunter of unfathomable power. It’s therefore only fitting that he’d reunite with Dekker three decades later to direct a new installment in the latter’s oft-returned to franchise.…

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REVIEW: Logan [2017]

“Does she remind you of anybody?” Calling any X-Men adaptation a gamble seems stupid considering the mass appeal comic book movies still hold at the box office, but Hollywood has a way of making those sentiments true when artists start bandying about the R-rated label. The standalone Wolverine films have seen what shying away from that challenge does, the first (Origins) proving a misguidedly silly throwaway and the second (The Wolverine) ending up little more than wasted potential or perhaps a casualty of studio interference. We’ve seen seventeen years of…

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REVIEW: Run All Night [2015]

“Me and you” There’s something to be said about knowing exactly what you’re getting and Jaume Collet-Serra is proving consistent enough to deliver that promise through his films. Whereas Luc Besson spins a revolving door of directors to helm his actioners—mostly tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top fare (besides the original hit-maker Taken) he doesn’t deem worthy of his own eye behind the lens—Collet-Serra has carefully chosen a series of scripts from disparate scribes to supply him serious thrills with which to place his visual stamp. The common denominator between them being Liam Neeson…

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REVIEW: Very Good Girls [2014]

“You didn’t want to stay and see what your special prize would be?” Writer/director Naomi Foner wants to tell us about the messiness of life through two eighteen-year old girls during their final summer before college. You’d assume they’d be the ideal candidates to do so too once they simultaneously make a pact to lose their virginity and meet the guy of both their dreams, but Very Good Girls refuses to let the ramifications of that stand on their own. Instead Foner adds parental infidelity, untimely death, sexual harassment, and…

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