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REVIEW: Isle of Dogs

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment

Image: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Chris Luckett

There are three cinematic masters in today’s reigning generation of directors, who each rarely ever fail to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. Along with Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson is one of those elite few who seem to just churn out brilliance without having to even try.

When the idiosyncratic director of Rushmore tackled stop-motion animation with 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, he found his truest calling. In the wake of his Oscar-nominated Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson has now returned to the same arena of animation and it’s a masterpiece even when stacked against his best.

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REVIEW: Independence Day: Resurgence

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Chris Luckett

Some directors find success with a formula and, for a lack of better ideas or larger ambition, repeat it over and over again until studios stop paying them money to. (How else to explain the continued employment of Michael Bay?)

Roland Emmerich is one of those directors. After Universal Soldier and Stargate, he reinvented the modern disaster movie by adding as many explosions and pyrotechnics as he could fit into Independence Day. Upon bombing with his 1998 Godzilla reboot, Emmerich then retreated back to the commercial comfort of The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and White House Down.

He now finally returns to the story that blew up his career twenty years ago, continuing what he originally envisioned as a trilogy. Independence Day: Resurgence may not have the bombastic impact of the original, nor its ballsy ingenuity, but it’s still better than you’d expect a two-decades-later sequel to be.
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CORE STORY: Thor: Ragnarok cast revealed

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment
Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Captain America: Civil War featured almost every superhero introduced over the span of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, save for two notable exceptions.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) weren’t present narratively, because of what they’re going through in Thor: Ragnarok, Beyond Hemsworth and Ruffalo, though, all that has been learned over the last year is that Natalie Portman would not be returning.

Marvel has now released a statement announcing the cast of the third Thor movie, and while Portman is indeed confirmed to be missing, there are several huge casting choices of note. Continue reading →

REVIEW: The Grand Budapest Hotel

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Chris Luckett

Wes Anderson is the most visually distinctive film director since Stanley Kubrick. Other than his first film, the six that followed — Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom — all looked similarly idiosyncratic to the point of being immediately identifiable, even just by a still frame, as “Andersonian.” His eighth feature, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is at once a typical Wes Anderson movie and also something much more.

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