Steve Delaunay 14 posts 2 comments

The history of western movies is almost as interesting as the era they chronicle, that brief period between the end of the Civil War and the dawn of the modern age, 1865 to 1900. The Salvation reminds us what we loved about the genre.…

“Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge" – Sun Tzu, The Art of War One day shortly after World War II, Winston…

My theory is that Terrence Fletcher, the band class dictator in Whiplash, is an imaginary character, a metaphor for the artist’s inner voice, the wicked voice, the one that whispers, “You’re a fraud.”  The sadistic music teacher, played…

Gone Girl isn't the movie you’ll be told it is. It’s better. It isn’t a thriller “torn from today’s headlines” or from obsessive media coverage of this or that true crime scandal, though at first it pretends to be. It’s more original. It…

Liam Neelson brings a gravitas to the action genre that few other actors can match.  He needed every ounce of it in Non-Stop, both to give real impact to the story’s strengths and distract from its weaknesses. There’s a scene in which…

Face to Face: Common Decency and the Banality of Evil - Two One-Set Films (12 Angry Men/Conspiracy) Here are two compelling views of the opposite ends of the human soul. Both are highly dramatic and skilfully achieved, their goals in close…

Imagine one intrepid studio executive – no it’s not an oxymoron; there’s more of them then we suspect (I suspect) – having survived the cold-sweat panic that must have been induced upon the first viewing of Shadow Recruit and – leaving the…

Godzilla 2014 is the Hagler vs. Hearns of giant rampaging colossal beast movies—only three rounds of action but who’s complaining?  (For those too young to remember, Hagler vs. Hearns was ranked almost universally as the greatest fight in…

Noah is a righteous man. He and his kin have been chosen by God to survive the apocalypse by flood, and instructed to build an Ark to shelter two of every living species during the coming storm. Crowe’s Noah, however, like other prophets…

It’s a theme with enough intrinsic promise to lend itself to many variations, from the profane to the profanely sublime: a man with a troubled or violent past seeks peace and redemption in a new life, a new place. Usually in a small town…