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Filtering by Category: movies
Eva Green as Miss Peregrine (Jay Maidment / Twentieth Century Fox)
The evergreen Eva Green is the best thing about Tim Burton's adaptation of Ransom Riggs' bestselling, "vernacular"-photography-inspired YA novel. But the stop-motion sequences are great, too. I reviewed the film for NPR.
Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington take over for Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner, respectively, in Antoine Fuqua's update of The Magnificent Seven.
Wait, Michael Biehn starred in a short-lived Magnificent Seven series on CBS in the late 90s? I've always been bad at keeping up with what's on TV, but this I should've known, given my long-term interest in the guy.
Anyway, here's my NPR review of the new Magnificent Seven from Antoine Fuqua and Denzel with Chris Pratt mugging his way around, too. Random note: It's funny that both The Magnificent Seven and Westworld, two long-dormant properties that starred Yul Brynner — most famous for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, "etcetera, etcetera" — as a black-clad cowboy, are both getting reimagined in 2016, isn't it? I think it is.
Wes Robinson and Valorie Curry in Blair Witch.
In 1999, the nanobudget horror hoaxumentary The Blair Witch Project rode a brilliant marketing campaign to blockbuster-level success. Now there's a legacy-quel called Blair Witch. My short review is that Blair Witch has displaced previous champ Frances Ha as the longest sub-90-minute movie I've seen in the last decade. My longer review, for NPR, is here. Boo. Also, boooooooooooooooo.
Leonard Nimoy's unflappable Mr. Spock communes with the Horta in "Devil in the Dark," from 1967. (CBS Consumer Products / Star Trek Archive)
I basically got into journalism because I wanted to write for Rolling Stone. That took longer to happen than I'd hoped it might, but it was a real thrill to get to do this piece for them yesterday, reflecting on What Star Trek Hath Wrought the occasion of the franchise's 50th anniversary.
Last night, the National Air and Space Museum showed "The Man Trap," the first Trek episode broadcast (albeit not the first one produced), at 8:30 p.m. Eastern — the same time NBC had shown it 50 years earlier. It's a really fun episode that demonstrates that the rich character relationships were present in the Original Series right from the beginning, and that most of the comedy in Trek was fully intentional. (Also that what was progressive in 1966 is decidedly not in 2016. But that's how progress works.)
Thanks to Scott Tobias for suggesting me for it, and to David Fear for editing the essay.
The September issue of Air & Space / Smithsonian, featuring the cover story I desperately wanted to call Warp Corps — because it's about a corps of people whom Star Trek has inspired and influenced, you see — is now on sale at the National Air and Space Museum (both locations, on the National Mall and at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia) as well as at Barnes & Noble stores and the digital retailer of your choice. You can read the feature here. Also, I'd love if if you would come buy a copy of the magazine from me for a paltry one-time fee $6.99 at the Museum during its three-day celebration of Star Trek's 50th anniversary. The event kicks off at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8 — the evening the Original Series episode "The Man Trap" was first broadcast on NBC.
Read MoreJack Huston, who is descended from showbiz royalty but in no way related to Keanu Reeves, and Toby Kebbell in the fourth movie version of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur.
Here's is the sort of sterling-quality joke that got whittled from what started out as a straight-up review of the new, Timur Bekmambetov-directed adaptation of Ben-Hur, but quickly turned into this.
EDITOR: Agreed. So they got an actor of Middle Eastern descent?
KLIMEK: They got a guy from Memphis.
EDITOR: You mean Memphis, Egypt?
KLIMEK: I do not. His name is Morgan Freeman.
EDITOR: I have heard of him.
KLIMEK: He has been in some other movies.
You can't blame me for digging in to the little differences between new and old, especially in light of the fact that Ben-Hur '59 is a venerable classic that I first saw when I was whatever age I was last Saturday night.
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham as a pair of Texas Rangers. (CBS Films)
After what feels like a streak of mediocre-to-awful summer blockbusters (Star Trek Beyond excepted), David Mackenzie's thoughtful, attentive crime drama Hell or High Water is a relief. My NPR review is here.
Beloved Pop Culture Happy Hour host Linda Holmes is at the Television Critics Association gathering in Los Angeles this week, so Tanya Ballard Brown and I joined regular panelists Stephen Thompson and Glen Weldon for an uncharacteristically reserved episode. By which I mean, neither of the big summer movies we autopsied, Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad, is very good, though the latter is much worse. I had hopes for both of them, because I admire their directors, Paul Greengrass and David Ayer, very much, and I've tended to like their work. You know what late-summer release was not a big letdown? Star Trek Beyond. I endorse it.
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