PCN RATING: Like Charles Bronson before him, Jason Statham has become a staple and brand name of hard-boiled action. The ironic thing about both stars is that though they have (had in Bronson’s case) plenty of the necessary charisma, most of their films aren’t really all that good. Arguably, Statham has had it a bit [...]
Written by: Nathan Bartlebaugh PCN Rating: You ever feel like every time we get close to getting the answers, someone changes the question? Hello there, Fringe. It’s good to have you back. Ending possibly the most agonizing wait of the winter television hiatus, the first episode in the new (dreaded) Friday night [...]
It’s official. Anne Hathaway will be Catwoman and Tom Hardy will play Bane in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. The first definitive casting regarding roles and characters, outside of the obvious, has just hit for Nolan’s third Batman film. All recent suggestions or suppositions that characters like Catwoman or Bane wouldn’t fit into the decidedly more [...]
It’s shaping up to be another cold, cold winter. Snow has beenfalling here in Baltimore since late December andwhite flakes have been raining down indiscriminately from the heavens all around us. Although we have yet to hit the height of last year’s winter madness, the troubling threat of chill precipitation looms large. 2010′s blizzard still has many of us [...]
Rubber was easily one of the oddest films I saw last year. A midnight movie if there ever was one, Quentin Dupiex’s surrealistic thriller follows the murderous vengeful rampage of a heart-broken serial killer. The one wrinkle of course is that the killer is a single rubber tire, rolling its way across country leaving devestation [...]
PCN RATING: There is a lot going on under the surface of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and it is a testament to the director’s management of her subject that the film is focused and prickly, instead of muted and insubstantial. Telling a story that will probably be off-hand referenced as the white, British version [...]
PCN RATING: Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer is one of the most grounded science fiction films of recent memory. The first time director has referred to his work as ”science fiction with many anchors in today’s reality.” He isn’t joking. In the future according to Sleep Dealer, Mexico is walled off, their water supply has become privatized, and day-laborers don’t [...]
Fantasy fans are no doubt counting down the days until April 17th, when George R.R. Martin’s epic saga ‘A Game of Thrones’ debuts on HBO. Martin’s swashbuckling adventures rife with political intrigue, dark portents, and fascinating characters aren’t quite your average genre fare. Darker and more brooding than the typical high fantasy that populates the [...]
Written by: Nathan Bartlebaugh PCN Rating: Who is the Green Hornet really? Britt Reid, the intrepid journalist of the golden age of radio was Batman before there was a Batman. He was spiritual sibling to Lamont Cranston, the shadowy mystique replaced by an exotic Asian sidekick, Kato. Reid even had an impressive lineage; his great [...]
Written by: Nathan Bartlebaugh When discussions of the year’s best films and awards come round, horror movies often get slighted. And yet, every year, there are at least a handful of films and performances in the genre which stand out and above the rest. This year was slower in terms of horror, but there was enough product on [...]
Written by Nathan Bartlebaugh 2010 might not have been the strongest year for movies, but it was an interesting and transitional one for the medium of film as a whole. If the art of cinema wasn’t’ always apparent, technique and delivery were constantly evolving. Although most of 2010 ran like an eternal movie summer with big [...]
Written by: Nathan Bartlebaugh PCN Rating: Dominic Sena’s Season of the Witch features Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as ex-Crusaders fighting their way across medieval Europe through all manner of zombies, devil dogs and gargoyles to deliver a suspected witch to a monastery. That it is a bad movie is not surprising. To find, however, [...]