Posts Tagged ‘Gerard Butler’

‘Olympus Has Fallen’: A Flickcharter’s Review

23, Mar 2013
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Olympus Has Fallen, director Antoine Fuqua‘s violent depiction of a direct terrorist attack on the White House, delivered exactly what I expected from it; nothing more, nothing less. (For the record, you can read what I had to say before seeing it in our Flickchart Preview.) It is Die Hard in the White House – so much so that it barely deviates from formula in even the slightest way. It’s a paint-by-numbers affair, but the painting is done professionally, so Olympus gets by with slightly more than a passing grade.

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Flickchart Preview: ‘Olympus Has Fallen’

22, Mar 2013
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Such was the success of Die Hard in 1988 that action movies have never quite been the same since. There is a particular kind of film that now even gets pitched as some kind of variant: Die Hard on a bus, Die Hard on a battleship, Die Hard on a train, Die Hard on a plane… you get the idea.

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What to Watch this Weekend: The Croods vs. Olympus Has Fallen

22, Mar 2013
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It can be tough deciding what movie to watch. That’s where I come in. To help lead you through the cinematic landscape to hopefully avoid the duds and misfires that can soil ones love for the theater going experience. In this series, I will take the trailers for what I assume will be the top 2 highest-grossing new releases, dissect their trailers, and then summarize who I think should see which movie. I’m not here to say which one will be better. I’m here to help you decide which will be better for you.

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The Guilty Pleasures: Dragon Edition

27, Apr 2011
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Dragons. Are there any cooler creatures in all of mythology? Unfortunately, in the world of celluloid, these great creatures of imagination have not really gotten their due. (At least, not in live-action cinema; why I have not yet seen How to Train Your Dragon is still beyond me.)

Is there any live-action film in which dragons have truly come off as cool as they deserve? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire wasn’t too bad, but the dragons aren’t the stars. As I impatiently await the day when Peter Jackson brings his vision of the ultimate dragon, Smaug, to life in The Hobbit, I think about other dragon-themed movies that I have enjoyed in the past. None of them are deserving enough to be called “great”, but I’m very forgiving of movies I want to like. In one of these cases, I was the perfect age to see a dragon with real presence brought to life on the big screen – even if the movie he inhabited was far from perfect. Without further adieu, I present, in ascending order on my Flickchart, my picks for Guilty Pleasures starring dragons.

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