REVIEW: Skyscraper [2018]

Got any duct tape? In an age of remakes, reboots, and rehashes, it’s suddenly become refreshing to see homage—especially the self-aware kind. If you’ve seen the alternate posters for Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s Skyscraper that crib off the designs of Die Hard and The Towering Inferno, you understand how the filmmakers have embraced comparison due to their love for those genre classics. It’s this love that allows them to take a step back and create their own story in those images, at once honoring the past, updating for the present, and…

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REVIEW: The Big Short [2015]

“Trust me. This happened.” I can honestly say I learned something watching The Big Short. That’s no small feat considering it was directed and cowritten by funnyman Adam McKay. His collaborations with Will Ferrell acting like a doofus are generally the exact opposite of educational. But he couldn’t have told this story about the handful of eccentrics who bet against the American economy and won by seeing the mortgage bubble everyone else couldn’t (or fraudulently ignored) without a financial crash course. CDOs, tranches, and sub-primes were as synonymous with gibberish…

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REVIEW: The Man with the Iron Fists [2012]

“When it comes to money, things get funny” Far from anything resembling a Kung Fu aficionado, I entered into RZA‘s directorial debut The Man with the Iron Fists with a lesser of many evils mentality. The theatre was to be my safe haven while my car got its oil change and of the two or three flicks I hadn’t yet seen, the potential sideshow of Jungle Village seemed the best way to spend ninety minutes. The Tarantino seal of approval and co-writing credit to Eli Roth did little to temper…

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