When I was a kid and an absolute fanatic for any movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, I convinced my grandmother that we had to go to Movie Gallery so we could rent Universal Soldier starring not only JCVD, but Dolph fucking Lundgren, too. We get the movie and rush back to her house so I can start inhaling the raw machismo of The Muscles from Brussels and Ivan Drago.
But the VHS starts and it's not the opening of Universal…
Everybody seems to be bemoaning that this isn't as good as the first two, but is a sequel that is merely very, very good instead of ridiculously great really that inferior? I don't think so.
The humor, the charm, and the pathos all still worked for me in this installment. I loved the pivot to an adventure narrative after the last film's heist/jailbreak inspirations. Sally Hawkins is definitely missed considering Mrs. Brown gets the best moments from the family, but…
John Mathieson did an interview several months ago in the press tour for this film where he discussed how Ridley Scott is able to shoot these large scale epics so quickly. According to Mathieson, Scott always has multiple cameras running, sometimes as many as fourteen. Even a simple dialogue scene, he’s got at least a few cameras running at once. While this is understandable for costly stunt sequences, it really demonstrates why Scott’s films of the last decade or so…
This year's big awards darling that is, in my opinion, a bit of a disappointment.
The first half is great. It moves effortlessly through Laszlo's early years in America, all the bad and good luck that comes his way as he tries to rebuild in a land he doesn't fit in, a land that openly doesn't want him there. Part one excels in mining incredible emotion from small interactions. When Laszlo meets Attila, you feel the weight of all he's…
