This modern dress version of the Shakespeare comedy was made with Whedon’s old friends and collaborators just after shooting ‘The Avengers.’
Tag: 2012
Last chance: ‘Prometheus’- the ‘Alien’ prequel on HBO Max
Ridley Scott returns to the ‘Alien’ universe with this visually magnificent odyssey with a weak script and a cosmic backdrop.
Matthew McConaughey is ‘Mud’ on Amazon Prime and Hulu
The third film from director Jeff Nichols is a story of childhood adventure steeped in the rural culture of life on the Mississippi and the mythology of Huckleberry Finn, but this boy’s adventure is also tangled in the world of adults and family bonds.
Jamie Foxx is ‘Django Unchained’ on Netflix and Peacock
In Django Unchained (2012), Quentin Tarantino takes on one of his favorite genres: the spaghetti western, with all its extreme violence, operatic drama, eccentric characters, and brutal portrait of frontier existence. But Tarantino being Tarantino, he doesn’t just make a big, violent, sprawling western filled gunfights and clever talk and driven by revenge and Old […]
‘Lore’ – navigating the collapse of Nazi Germany on Criterion Channel and free on Kanopy and Hoopla
Before she was tapped to helm Black Widow for Marvel, Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland directed Lore (Germany, 2012). A coproduction of Germany and Australia with a German cast, setting, and language, Lore takes the viewer on a harrowing odyssey through Germany after the fall of Hitler. The privileged life of fresh-faced German teenager Lore (Saskia […]
Last chance: ‘Argo’ – a stranger than fiction rescue tale on HBO Max
Winner of the 2013 Academy Award for best picture, Argo (2012) is also the name of a fake movie and a real-life rescue stranger-than-fiction mission to rescue the six Americans who escaped the U.S. Embassy in Iran when it was stormed in 1980. Ben Affleck directs (it’s his third film behind the camera) and takes […]
‘The Hunger Games’ – May the odds be ever in your favor on Peacock
Based on the first book in the dystopian trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2012) was one of the more successful efforts to transform a hot young adult series into a big screen franchise, more mature than Harry Potter and grittier than Eclipse, and even a little political in its own right. The story […]
‘The Cabin in the Woods’ on Peacock
There’s more knowing horror comedy and meta-horror commentary than actual tension and thrills in The Cabin in the Woods (2012), the self-aware, awfully clever love letter to the horror movie fandom from Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon. That’s fair, because scares or not, I had more fun watching Cabin than most recent horror films. Producer […]
‘To Rome with Love’ on Amazon Prime
To Rome with Love (2012) takes Woody Allen’s continental road show to Italy for a quartet of stories – really, more like extended skits – with an international cast. Jesse Eisenberg ignores advice from his older self (Alec Baldwin) when his relationship with Greta Gerwig is complicated by the emotionally ping-ponging Ellen Page in the […]
‘Not Fade Away’ – coming of age in the sixties on Hulu
Not Fade Away (2012), the autobiographical feature debut by The Sopranos creator David Chase, is not the usual rise-and-fall story of the rock and roll band. There is a band at the center of the film and Douglas (John Magaro), a Jersey kid who graduates from high school as an overlooked schlub looking for something […]