Keanue Reeves Played A Neo-Noir Superhero In The Enjoyable Constantine

DC Comics has struggled to get quite as many of its comic book characters to spawn big-screen franchises compared to their Marvel Comics counterpart (2010s Red was the first DC Comics adaptation that wasn't based on Superman, Batman or Swamp-Thing to spawn a sequel), but they've still got a bevy of memorable standalone movies to their name. Case in point: the 2005 Francis Lawrence directorial effort Constantine based on the comic book character of the same name. Though initially, it received mixed reviews and fanboy disdain for deviating from the comics, it's since garnered cult classic status and for very good reason.

Richard Linklater Delivers An Intriguing Trip With A Scanner Darkly

Richard Linklater's primary focus as a filmmaker has been making quiet meditations on how mundane moments of life shape us as people in the long-term. This wistful kind of storytelling has served him extremely well in delivering such outstanding features as Boyhood or any of the three Before movies. But over the course of his career Linklater has stepped out of that comfort zone to deliver delightful family comedies (School of Rock), remarkable Coen Brothers-esque dark comedies (Bernie) and even acclaimed period piece romantic dramas (Me and Orson Welles). But perhaps his biggest stretch outside of Boyhood-type projects is A Scanner Darkly, an animated adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's novel of the same name.

Bram Stoker's Dracula Is A Sexually Charged Piece of Cinema That Makes For A Delightful Watch

Bram Stoker's Dracula is one horny movie. It's so horny you might as well call it a crash of rhinos. It's so fixated on getting it on that one is surprised some James Brown tunes don't pepper the soundtrack. Director Francis Ford Coppola has assembled an A-list cast and some extraordinary production design, not to mention Bram Stoker's iconic source material, to create a vivid erotic fever dream about the one, the only, the vampire called Dracula. That description is meant to be a compliment, Bram Stoker's Dracula has refreshingly no inhibitions about what it wants to be is and fully embraces any opportunity to revel in both sex and hamminess, frequently at the same time.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum See's The John Wick Series Continuing To Slay

What a wonderfully out-of-nowhere creation this John Wick series has become.  Not based on any pre-existing source material, the first movie was quietly filmed in 2013 and didn't start its marketing campaign until two months before its October 2014 debut. It was flying so far under the radar yet it ended up becoming a sleeper hit and deservedly so, it was a blast of an action movie that made good use of both Keanu Reeves and well-shot action sequences. Nearly five years later, John Wick has turned into a full-blown saga that continues onward with John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum (that title is the worst thing to emerge from this series) and manages to maintain the level of quality that made the first two movies such joys.

Looking For An Action Movie Sequel With Fun To Spare? John Wick: Chapter 2 Is Just What You've Been Looking For!

There are a couple things you need in an action movie to succeed. A good grasp of the language of how to shoot action sequences is vital, since a cohesive visual style is crucial for the audience to even get anything out of the extended shoot-outs or fistfights. Understanding how to keep bringing new elements to the table in each of your action sequences so they don't get repetitive is a great choice, ditto for getting editors who know how to make all of these scenes flow naturally. John Wick: Chapter 2 understands all these crucial rules as well as one other truism of life: it never hurts to have an adorable pit bull around.

The Matrix Reloaded Goes Bigger Than Its Predecessor To Mixed Results

Like many sequels, The Matrix Reloaded has a burning desire to go bigger than its predecessor in every way possible. It wants to double down of the philosophical themes as well as provide more pulse-pounding action than you can shake a stick at. It's an admirable sort of ambition, the kind that runs deep through both the hits and misses in the filmography of The Wachowski Starship. But ambition on its own just can't quite sustain The Matrix Reloaded, which ends up falling quite short of the first Matrix movie.

Nearly Two Decades Later, The Matrix Is Still A Thrilling Game-Changer

Despite being a movie that hinges entirely on the concept of what technology and computers could accomplish in at the tail end of the 1990's, The Matrix has aged surprisingly well in its seventeen years of existence. In fact, the concept of having an alternate persona or even an alternate world nestled within technology feels very much like an idea of the moment considering how prominent Twitter,. Tumblr and Facebook are in so many peoples lives. The plot of this super fun movie is similarly timeless, taking Joseph Campbell's conventional Heroes Journey plot structure and adding in dashes of kung-fu and technology paranoia for good measure.

Fan-Casting The Sinister Six

One aspect of the Spider-Man movies that surprises me is how, even though we've had five films centered around the web-crawler, there's so many parts of the characters mythology we have yet to see in cinematic form. Black Cat, Sinister Six, Kraven The Hunter, Vulture, Mysterio....so many creations from the comics have yet to see the light of a film projector. Part of the blame for these characters staying on the wayside can be attributed  how The Amazing Spider-Man retread an enormous amount of storytelling ground from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, meaning time that could have been spent setting up new characters like The Chameleon and Silver Sable was spent going over the whole Uncle Ben fiasco again.

John Wick Review

A Shot In The Dark Becomes A Bullseye

There's one indisputable fact on this planet; puppies are adorable. I'm pretty partial to pugs myself, but all kinds of adorable puppies grace this Earth and make the world a better to place to be. The awesomeness of puppies was proved with Tom Hardy in The Drop last month, and now Keanu Reeves gets to pile on more evidence to this fact with John Wick. Reeves play the titular character, a widower whose sole solace from the pain he feels from his wife's passing is a puppy named Daisy his deceased wife gave him just before her passing.