CinemaUS Reviews

Emily Bronte’s classic literary novel, “Wuthering Heights” undergoes another adaptation with British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, who strips down the beautifully tortured love story in an attempt for realism and reduces it to nothing more than scenery and the minutiae of the everyday. “Wuthering Heights” tells the story of Heathcliff, (Solomon Glave), an orphan boy who [...]

Sometimes an actor just doesn’t seem to belong. If you looked at the cast list for ”The Paperboy” and thought ‘Zac Efron? That kid out of ”High School Musical” who tried to play a grown-up in the sappy, gilded melodrama of ”The Lucky One”?’, Lee Daniels (”Precious”) new film might just turn you around. Of [...]

Despite all the noise in the marketing about this being the first feature length stop motion animated 3D film, the only new aspect is the 3D. It’s a close cousin to Tim Burton’s 2005 film ”Corpse Bride”, so as usual we’re left with the question of whether the 3D adds anything. There aren’t many pop-out-of-the-screen [...]

In what is sure to be remembered as “the year of Channing Tatum,” a smaller budgeted film he did last year (it played the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival) is finally seeing the light of day. That film is “10 Years” and it is, surprisingly, an intimate look at a group of young adults who [...]

What do you do after you’ve rescued your daughter from sex traffickers in Paris, killing pretty much everyone in your sight to do it? If you’re Brian Mills (Neeson), you give that same daughter driving lessons and worry about her new boyfriend. You also head to Istanbul for a few days work. But when the [...]

When the garbage man empties the trash, there’s usually always some ghastly goo hanging from the rim or sitting atop of a stuck newspaper at the bottom. That neglected eyesore is ”Resident Evil : Retribution”. Atop of the mouldy banana, doused in week-old quiche leftovers, is a time-wasting zombie series – based on the popular [...]

Originally released in 2009 in Czech, the English dubbed version of ”Toys in the Attic” was released earlier this year with the voice talents of Forrest Whittaker, Joan Cusack, and Carey Elwes. The story takes place (spoiler alert!) in an attic. All of the forgotten toys come alive and carry on very innocently inspired lives. [...]

When you think of all the potential benefits of time travel – going back to avoid catastrophes, make smarter investments, inform your younger self that the dreamboat you’ve been crying over is totally not worth it – using it to dispose of bodies doesn’t automatically spring to mind, but that is indeed the concept behind [...]

The Michael Jordan of cinema, Adam Sandler is out to conquer yet another genre – and ideally the comic superstar, whose been smashing his trademark lowbrow comedies out of the park for years now (the one where he played his own female twin, the one where he romanced box-office poison Jennifer Aniston, the one where [...]

A high speed pursuit leads to a deadly shootout with a quartet of gang bangers, captured clearly on the police car’s video camera. Just another day in Los Angeles. Several weeks later we join police officers Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Pena) as they return to duty. Currently enrolled in college and taking filmmaking [...]

If Aussie director John Hillcoat had suddenly found himself charged with the task of doing a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ reboot, one imagines it wouldn’t be at all that dissimilar to ”Lawless”, a southern fried actioner with as much machismo as it does moonshine. Hillcoat, known for directing dark, bleak period pieces (and ones that generally [...]

Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki, ”Arbitrage” is a morality play veiled as a murder mystery. Richard Gere is the bad guy, a troubled hedge-fund manager named Robert Miller. With his million-dollar smile and designer suits, he’s gotten away with a lot – and may continue to doing so. He’s cheating on his wife (Susan [...]

Like a Karate Kid movie without The Crane, Walter Salles’ ”On the Road” would lose its footing – or should that be thumbs? – without it’s astutely-cast leads. As those wild literary heroes of Jack Kerouac’s classic beatnik novel, Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen ‘Twilight’ Stewart burn rubber as Sal, Moriarty and Marylou, respectively, [...]

Buzzing with fast cash exchange and “conversations that never happened,” “The Ambassador” follows Danish journalist, Mads Brugger as he goes undercover as a Liberian diplomat to explore the seedy underbelly of the blood diamond trade. The documentary is frightening and fascinating package, where diplomacy is bought and sold, yet Brugger pulls out a convincing yet [...]

As the two most successful directors in Hollywood in the late 1970s, Lucas and Spielberg could do whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was to express the shared love of movie serials they both loved as kids and teenagers, the same aesthetic with which Lucas bought ”Star Wars” to the screen. Think of the [...]