ATROPHY AND APATHY: ESCAPE PLAN'S AGAIN ACTION TITAN TAG TEAM IS TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE "What the hell happened, America? There are a number of reasons why Escape Plan flopped..." click on the photo to read more
CLAWS AND BLAHS: The Wolverine is an unrewarding one-off adventure for the most popular X-Man click on the photo to read more
Salinger It’s rare that a documentary actually breaks news, so kudos to Salinger’s brain trust for withholding the revelation that the reclusive Catcher in the Rye author instructed his estate to publish five new books posthumously. Sadly, that will turn out to be the lasting value of this film, which takes an annoyingly sensationalist approach to deconstructing the iconoclastic, complicated artist. The interview content is impressively exhaustive, though, and goes a long way toward redeeming this project.
The Lone Ranger The casting of Johnny Depp as Tonto turned some heads (the wrong way), but none other than Quentin Tarantino backed this notorious summer flop, saying, “The first 45 minutes are excellent. The next 45 minutes are a little soporific … Then comes the train scene. Incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, ‘What? That’s the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?’” Hard luck eponymous lead Armie Hammer (The Social Network) is surely appreciative… and would love a role in QT’s next anything at this point.
The Canyons Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader directs, American Psycho novelist Bret Easton Ellis writes, career suicide artist Lindsay Lohan stars. Oh sorry, that should be “stars alongside porn superstar James Deen.” What could possibly go wrong? Read all about it in last January’s outstanding, hilarious New York Times exposé by Stephen Rodrick. It’s way more entertaining than this unfortunate wooden misfire by otherwise talented and inspired artists—bizarre fourway sex scene climax notwithstanding.
Blue Jasmine Woody Allen took most of his critical lumps starting in the mid-’90s, but now, at age 78, he’s improbably enjoying a commercial renaissance, thanks in no small part to Midnight in Paris and this exceptional dramedy. The presence of Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay may send stunt-cast alarms blaring, but this is really Cate Blanchett’s film. As a pompous, cuckolded widow set adrift in bohemian San Francisco, she’s forced to come to terms with heretofore alien notions of independence and identity.
Machete Kills Two noirish descents into Sin City; a labyrinthine, envelope pushing “Mariachi” trilogy; four fucking Spy Kids flicks: It’s safe to say that Robert Rodriguez is not opposed to serializing his work (he made the right call leaving The Faculty sequel-free). This good-natured, cartoonishly violent exploitation sequel flopped at the box office, but RR deserves props for putting his eponymous Mexi-can killing machine (Danny Trejo) up against the likes of notorious flameouts Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson.
Metallica: Through the Never The world’s biggest metal band—for better or worse— continues to ham-fistedly mash art and commerce into impressively unique weirdness. Half of Through the Never is a gaudy, pyro-popping 3-D concert film; the other half is an abstract, largely unrelated narrative, in which a stagehand (Dane DeHaan, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) embarks upon a nightmarish urban misadventure. Unsatisfying as both live document and high art, TTN is still pretty damn original, for what that’s worth.