Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/derek91/page/3/)
You don’t see too many futuristic time travel movies that take place in the cane fields of Kansas, but that’s precisely the setting of writer/director Rian Johnson’s film Looper. Continue Reading
Like birds perched on a power line, baseball scouts observe everything that happens on the diamond with sharp eyes that can seek out the tiniest details. They notice if a pitcher isn’t using their back leg to push their weight forward on delivery. They can tell if a batter’s knuckles don’t line up properly on the bat handle. And they can sure as hell see if a fielder gets in front of a groundball the right way. Baseball scouts have their tools of trade: the stopwatch, the battered notepad, the pencil and pen, even the score box in a town newspaper. There’s a lot of pressure on scouts. The management of the team they represent is counting on them to spot the latest and greatest talent to help their ball club get more butts in the seats and improve profits down the road. Continue Reading
In The Possession, the latest release from horror legend Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures, a pre-teen girl named Em (Natasha Calis) buys a wooden box at a garage sale. Continue Reading
According to Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the protagonist of director David Koepp’s latest film Premium Rush, there are over 1500 bike messengers in New York City. If all of them rode like Wilee, who doesn’t have brakes on his bike, there would likely be 1500 car accidents every day in the Big Apple. On a normal day, this guy rides like he’s got a death wish, but the story revolves around Wilee on an unordinary day, when his latest delivery is so attractive to outside forces, it could get him killed before he gets the owner to sign on the dotted line. Continue Reading
If you see director John Hillcoat’s Lawless, you’ll learn that brass knuckles make a gory, unappealing mess of a man’s face. You’ll learn that a man can have hot tar poured over every inch of his bare flesh and still survive. You’ll learn that hasty decisions can have lethal consequences, and that death can be a grim, looming weight on a person’s conscience. Rape, violence and guilt are subjects touched on in Hillcoat’s first full-length feature since The Road (2009). Hillcoat doesn’t just flirt with these dark topics; he makes his actors get waist-deep in blood, sweat and snot, pulling viewers headlong into the filth as well. Continue Reading
Sweaty handshakes, promises of tax cuts, and podium debates. Trash talking, a painful hunting accident, and ignorant slander. Continue Reading
In the climactic battle of The Expendables 2, two dinosaurs of the action film genre, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme, tangle in a fight to the death. Stallone whips around a chain big enough to wrap around a hundred year-old oak tree’s trunk three times. Van Damme’s weapon of choice is a knife that Jim Bowie would be proud to wear on his hip. Continue Reading
Four adult male suburbanites form a neighborhood watch to protect their beloved town of Glenview, Ohio, from a vicious murderer who peels the skin off the bones and muscles of victims. People with weak stomachs: don’t be scared off by this plot point. Continue Reading
Pre-pubescent love gets the film treatment in director Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. The film is beautifully shot, contains heartwarming and peculiar acting by both cinematic unknowns and veterans, and it is written in a whimsical fashion. It’s a quiet, nifty little movie amongst swaggering summer blockbuster giants, but it deserves your attention all the same.
What’s real and what’s a figment of a stressed imagination get muddled in director Len Wiseman’s Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 sci-fi classic of the same name that starred Arnold Schw Continue Reading