By Dr. Craig D. Reid Screenwriting 101: It is important to care for or associate with the hero, in that way the audience has a vested interest in the character in as much we want to cheer for him/her and his/her success. Here in lies the problem with Real Steel…we don’t care about the hero […]
Killer Elite: No Sam Peckinpah Film
By Dr. Craig D. Reid Killer Elite is a dirty, gritty, brutally honest film. So what exactly does this mean? First off it’s not even close to the original far out film of the same name that Sam Peckinpah did back in 1975, which featured a dirty performance by Robert Duval, a gritty portrayal of mercenary […]
THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: Humankind has a Chimp on its Shoulder
By Dr. Craig D. Reid “Oh NO! There goes San Francisco, go, go Chimpzilla.” After you’ve seen The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (RPA; aka Caesar and the Rise of the Apes) then the paraphrased words from the Blue Oyster Cult’s 1977 hit “Godzilla,” will make even more sense. As movie critics, one of the […]
COWBOYS & ALIENS: aka CIA, and There’s No Intelligence
By Dr. Craig D. Reid Cowboys & Aliens should really have been called CIA, Cowboys & Indians & Aliens. But of course there is no political correctness here because if you were to remove the “Intelligence” from the film’s pseudo-acronym, then you’d get Cowboys & Aliens, thereby making the real movie sorely lacking in intelligence. Ignore the […]
HARRY POTTER: THE “POTTERER” FINALLY WINS
By Dr. Craig D. Reid Well, the party’s over, the end of a 10-year, 8-film and $2 billion domestic box office (worldwide more millions than 2011 British football player salaries combined, which incidentally is a lot) cinematic era with this final installment of a series of films adapted from a pseudo-children’s novel written by Joanne “Jo” Rowling (aka […]
GREEN LANTERN: LANTERN TWO, A GIRL AND PIZZA FACE
By Dr. Craig D. Reid Ryan Reynolds got his big break starring in the TV show, Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place (1998-2001) and in Green Lantern, although Reynolds as Hal Jordon (aka Green Lantern) is one of two guys vying for the same girl, he’s playing rendition two of the fabled DC […]