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Posts by Zoe Chevat

Review

Revolutionary Thinking Inside the Box: A Review of Colombiana

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, August 29th

Spoilers, if one’s really concerned about that in this sort of thing

After laying bare the thinking behind Colombiana‘s ad campaign earlier this month, I was more eager than any of you to see how such a promising thing, if one confused about its audience, would shape up on the big screen. I’m all too happy to report that this trim 107 minutes of bombast and revenge is exactly as advertised. Colombiana‘s a run-of-the-mill dumb action movie, and from where I’m sitting, that’s all to the good.

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Review

Consider Your Period Piece Blown to Pieces: Captain America: The First Avenger

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, July 24th

NEEDLESS TO SAY, INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF SPOILERS THEREIN.

You’ve got to hand it to Marvel for figuring a few things out recently. While their Big Two competitor gleefully jettisons 70 years of questionable costume changes and Kraft single one-liners, Marvel’s gone back to their roots with stellar results. Their streak continues with the good old new-fashioned Captain America. Retro is always in style, and a dose of gee-wizardry can go a long way, particularly if you’re harkening to old school heroics for summer box-office fun. Don’t call Captain America a period piece, though; it’ll knock your period to pieces. Sincere, fun, and earnest without verging on treacly, the Cap’s big trip to the big screen has a potent mix of the retro winking and newfangled action that is Golden Age adaptation at its best.

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Review

Save the Green Planet!: Superheroics 101 With Green Lantern

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, June 19th

Big screen comic adaptations have grown darker and darker in the last 10 years, covering the Cuban Missile Crisis, parental abandonment and betrayal, the ethics of justified killing, threatened genocide, and allegories for contemporary terrorism, to name a few recent plots. So it’s something of a coup to see that DC has pushed up a summer tentpole undeniably for kids, one without the heft of the adult themes we’ve grown accustomed to from the Big Two. A movie whose uncomplicated trajectory and absolutist morality spell easy fun for the whole family. You know; Green Lantern.

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Review

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: You Seem Familiar? Have I Watched You Before?

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, May 22nd

“You seem familiar. Have I threatened you before?” It’s a question Captain Jack Sparrow likes to pose, and it’s one that might give you pause, or just a wicked sense of déjà vu. A disturbing sense that we’ve been threatened before is exactly what you can expect from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, a dour, bloated whale of a summer movie. For two-and-a-half hours, you can follow along the worn dreadlocked wig of Captain Jack Sparrow as he searches, with about 300 supporters, for the Fountain of Youth. I was wishing for the fabled Fountain about twenty minutes in, because if it’s one thing that the fourth episode of Pirates made me feel, it was old. Grabbing a cutlass and slashing to the quick; POTC 4 is an over-long, overcrowded, boring ride, if your definition of a ride is a rattling wooden crate on some very rickety track.

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Review

Get Hammered!: A Review of ‘Thor’

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, May 7th

It’s the beginning of summer 2011, and that can only mean one thing. Marvel is racing to get the public up to speed before their mega-picture The Avengers hits theaters next year, and they’re determined to get us there whether we feel like it or not. One can only marvel (or DC) at the rate with which these installments are being pushed out, and try to hope for the best. There are origin stories to spool out, seeds to be planted, a host of other metaphors to be abused, all in the name of brand reproduction. There is also a slowly building meta story involving S.H.I.E.L.D. and Samuel L. Jackson being fed in low-calorie nibblets at the tail end of every one of these blockbusters. The very thought of how many episodes of high-finish CG, stunt casting choices, and clunky dialogue one would have to endure just to get to the supposed payoff of The Avengers movie was, and is, exhausting.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that THOR is both watchable, and definitively enjoyable.

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