Jurassic World (2015)

Like most prepubescent boys (and girls) in the early ‘90s, I was obsessed with Jurassic Park. I can still vividly remember the first time I saw the movie – perhaps my earliest clear memory of a movie theatre – clutching my armrests in fear as an attempt to transport velociraptors went horribly wrong. By the…

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy promises the kind of irreverent disdain for blockbuster norms that founded the Marvel Studios juggernaut, way back when they handed the reins to Mr. Favreau and Mr. Downey Jr. It features an unapologetically weird crew of intergalactic outlaws – green-skinned princesses and rocket-wielding raccoons – in an unapologetically weird universe mined…

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie (2014)

In an era where blockbuster movies direct their immense budgets towards overcoming the restrictions of cinema, The Lego Movie succeeds by embracing its limitations. Those limitations are found in its animation; computer-generated, sure, but constructed from Lego blocks in their millions. Directors/screenwriters Phil Lord and Christopher Miller get a lot of mileage out of their…

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

If you watched the trailer above for Zero Dark Thirty, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a cinematic Call of Duty, a jingoistic portrayal of the war on terrorism, an action film where Bert Macklin, Drazic and Joel Edgerton kill Osama Bin Laden. Certainly, the last hour of the film is a tense, cavernous…