An Overstuffed Script Leaves The Rainmaker Dry When it Comes to Engaging Characters

The Rainmaker may sound like the name of a supervillain origin story but it's actually a film adaptation of a John Grisham courtroom novel of the same name. The protagonist of the piece is young lawyer Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon). A devotee to the law and also the owner of a zoo, Baylor finds employment working for a famous lawyer by the name of Bruiser (Mickey Rourke). While working for Bruiser, Baylor partners up with Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), who teaches Baylor the tricks of ambulance chasing. Eventually, Baylor gets entangled in a trio of court cases, the most prominent of which involves helping a family take down an insurance company that denied their son a life-saving procedure.

Stardust Is A Good Old Fashioned Fantasy Romp And A Highly Entertaining One At That!

Among his numerous hallmarks as a director, Matthew Vaughn loves to play fast and loose with the comic books and graphic novels he adapts into movies. More often than not, Vaughn will basically just run with the core concept of what he's adapting into a film to better suit his own interests and desires most notably in turning Mark Millar's grim Kingsman graphic novel into a breezy Bond homage. Even X-Men: First Class, his feature most faithful to its source material, took liberties with what it was adapting and this tendency of Vaughn's is on full display in his first ever directorial effort, Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel that's far more family-friendly than its source material.

"Now That's How You Make a Movie!" - A Review Of The Brilliant Brigsby Bear

It takes a lot of passion and soul to make any piece of art. Whether it's a film, a book, music, whatever artform it manifests in, the act of putting all of yourself into some kind of creative expression is incredibly admirable. There's many moments in the monologue Anton Ego gives in the final scene of Ratatouille that really resonate with me, but I'm particularly fond of the one line that goes "in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." That's very much something that needs to be kept in mind when examining any piece of art and it's an idea most definitely reinforced by Brigsby Bear, a superb new indie dramedy that put a big smile on my face and warm n' fuzzy feelings in my heart.

Terminator 3 Is A Derivative Disaster That Ended Up Being The Worst Movie In The Franchise

In the Terminator universe, the end of the world comes in the form of Judgement Day, the day when the machines took over, nuked the planet and sent humanity to near-extinction. But for the Terminator as a movie series, the end basically came when James Cameron left the directors chair and some producers decided to trot out the Terminator brand name for some easy bucks despite the fact that the entire Terminator plotline was obviously wrapped up in a tidy and satisfying bow at the end of the second Terminator movie. Screw concise storytelling though, we've got some pennies we still haven't wrung out of this dead horse!