Review of Man of Steel directed by Zach Snyder By COYLE NEAL The Superman story has been told (and filmed) so often that it is undoubtedly a challenge for filmmakers come up with a new ‘take’ on the story that is both interesting to the viewer and faithful to the canon (assuming that “faithfulness to the canon” is a virtue to be pursued rather than a rule to be cast off—which of course is not an assumption we can always... Read more
Review of After Earth, Directed by M. Night Shyamalan If a naïve and unassuming moviegoer were to attend a showing of After Earth and, appalled by the glaring deficiencies of the movie, leave before the credits rolled, he might be forgive for believing that the dialogue was written by Deepak Chopra and the action by a space-fantasy-obsessed Dr. Phil. The father exhorts his son with bland and vaguely spiritual advice: “find your center. This creation will be yours,” and the son... Read more
The classic tale of women's empowerment, Stockholm Syndrome, and the cult of romance. Read more
Review of The Kings of Summer, Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts Whatever happened to those coming-of-age films that mixed a naive innocence with humor and a touching story? Nostalgia? The Kings of Summer offers an antidote. Three adolescent teenagers decide to declare independence from their parents, build a house in the woods, and live off the land. Joe Toy (Nick Robinson) is sick of his father’s (Nick Offerman) smothering control over his life. Patrick Keenan (Gabriel Basso) finds his parents psychotically weird... Read more
Review of The Battleship Potemkin, Directed by Sergei Eisenstein One of the great things about Netflix and YouTube is the instantaneous access to a wealth of old films that you used to be able to see only on a beat-up VHS player at your local university library. Seeing as we at Schaeffer’s Ghost make a pretense of telling you which movies are good which aren’t, I felt a duty to watch some of the old ones to beef up my... Read more
Review of Iron Man 3, Directed by Shane Black The United States is a technologically-obsessed society in a technologically-obsessed era. The line between magic and science in Hollywood films has begun to fade. The Avengers franchise is a perfect example. The Avengers movie involves gods and supernatural forces, but these are part of the same world as the magical Tesseract cube, which is integrated into human science. Or think of X-Men where scientific reasons (i.e., genetic mutations) create mutants with... Read more
Review of Now You See Me, Directed by Louis Leterrier Now You See Me follows the story of the Four Horsemen (a brand new quartet of illusionists) as they stage three consecutive shows. In their first show in Las Vegas, they steal money from a bank in Paris and shower the crowds with the Euros. FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) give chase with the on-and-off help of Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a... Read more
By THE EDITORS As Schaeffer’s Ghost approaches its first anniversary, we want to share some news, brag a little bit, and give you advance notice on some upcoming free stuff. First, we want to say “thank you” to our readers. Time and again we’ve enjoyed the responses to our posts from our readership, including comments from a few authors whose books we’ve reviewed here. Hearing from readers is a big part of what keeps us writing. So thank you, and... Read more
Review of Epic, Directed by Chris Wedge From Chris Wedge, director of Ice Age, comes Epic, a passable animated feature based on William Joyce’s The Leaf-Men and the Brave Good Bugs. The plot is … well, kind of complex and hard to summarize. If you don’t care about the plot and just want the review, you can skip this next bit. If you want the rundown, well, buckle up, because it’s a doozy. *** Life is hard for teenager Mary... Read more
Review of Scorsese’s Jefferson Lecture The National Endowment for the Humanities selected filmmaker Martin Scorsese to deliver its 2013 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, a distinction NEH calls “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Speaking to an audience at the Kennedy Center in April in Washington, D.C.—and to a worldwide audience that could access the lecture online as Scorsese delivered it—the filmmaker passionately encouraged his listeners to embrace film preservation, a cause... Read more
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