Recent Articles from Dave Taylor
Dave on film: Classic Bond is back and better than ever
There’s no more iconic spy in Western culture than that of 007, Bond, James Bond, and with a 50-year cinematic history, the 22 previous films in the franchise also represent an extraordinary body of work. The character of suave but deadly Bond has been played by a number of actors, from Sean Connery to Roger […]
Dave on film: A sci-fi thriller buried in a cornfield
In the closing years of this century, organized crime syndicates have a problem with the standard tactic of threatening to kill someone for not cooperating because it appears that every person on Earth is tracked and can’t die without leaving vital information about their death behind. By a lucky coincidence, however, it turns out that […]
Dave on film: Here’s how they do it without Matt Damon
The Bourne trilogy (Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum) is one of the most dynamic action thrillers in the history of cinema, with Jason portrayed by Matt Damon in the career-defining role of the everyman who finds he’s been programmed by the CIA to be a deadly assassin. The third film ends with Bourne […]
“The Hunger Games” has appeal, but it’s no “Harry Potter”
In a dystopian future where the government keeps a tight rein on the populace, the annual reminder of a failed uprising is The Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death of teens from each of the twelve districts. When her young sister Prim (Willow Shields) is selected as the female tribute from District Twelve, […]
Dave on film: Trite tale of a troubled telekinetic teen
A high school loser gains superpowers through an encounter with a mysterious crystalline structure. Will it help him become happy, popular and successful, or will it amplify his dark side and give his anger an outlet so he can lash out against his hurtful world, gradually increasing in power until nothing can stop him […]
Dave on film: Streep’s powerhouse performance
Review: Iron Lady On the surface, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher might not seem like a good subject for a biopic. She wasn’t flamboyant, there’s no romantic back story, and she was more known for her steel will than her diplomacy. In these politically charged times, however, The Iron Lady is surprisingly timely, with […]
Dave on film: A self-conscious second “Holmes”
While I quite enjoyed the 2009 Guy Ritchie reinvention of the fabled observant detective in Sherlock Holmes, applying the same formula in this newer film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows proved more a boring, tedious exercise in special effects and self-conscious film making and less an engaging and narratively ingenious film. In the original […]
Dave on film: See “Hugo” twice
Once in a while, a film comes along that defies simple explanation. The story proves complex, the characters unexpectedly nuanced, and the entire narrative experience is beyond anything you expect. Hugo is just such a movie, a story that succeeds as a children’s fable in the spirit of childhood fantasies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang […]
Dave on film: “In Time” is a waste of it
What a great premise for a film: that in the future the base currency of the economy is time, time remaining in your life, and if you’re blue collar, every day’s a struggle to quite literally earn sufficient time to stay alive while the ruling class, the 1 percent, have decades or even centuries of […]
Dave on film: Prophetic or psychotic?
Something really bad is coming, an impending apocalypse and only Curtis (Michael Shannon) can see it on the horizon. His Mom was institutionalized after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia when he was 10, however, so are his dreams a prophecy of the future or his own mental facilities starting to fail? Stuck in the chaos […]
Dave on film: Bring on the pandemic!
There are specific genres of films, certain themes, that I find highly appealing, and one of those is apocolyptic events. From the daft The Happening to the cheesy The Day After Tomorrow, if the world’s ending, if we’re all facing extinction as a species, if something really terrible is going to happen, I’m interested. I […]
Dave on film: Monkeying around can be fun
What if there was a research drug in the laboratory right now that had a good chance of curing Alzheimer’s but it needed more testing on animals before it could be released for human trials? And what if that same neurogenesis drug made its research subjects smarter? That’s the premise of the exciting and surprisingly […]