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“MARLOWE”; by-the-book noir is eye-catcher! | REVIEW

Film is based on the 2014 novel 'The Black-Eyed Blonde' by John Banville
Starring Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Liam Neeson and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Directed by Neil Jordan

Ceiling fans, a dame of dubious motivations, drugs, sex, the sinister side of Hollywood, top hats and tommy guns, high stops from above ceiling fans, they’re all here in “Marlowe,” the new noir thriller from filmmaker Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game,” “The End of the Affair”), with Liam Neeson as the dependable yet perennially down-on-his-luck private eye Philip Marlowe. “Marlowe” finds Raymond ... more >

Noise, speed and brutality laced with the sweet, human touch of brotherhood; Liam Neeson stars in “THE MARKSMAN” | REVIEW

A character study paired with the thrills of a pursuit across the Southwest
Jacob Perez, Harry Maldonado Teresa Ruiz and Liam Neeson
Directed by Robert Lorenz

It definitely helps to give your protagonist a certain “set of skills,” particularly if he is played by that grand master of icy revenge, Liam Neeson. Neeson, impossibly craggy yet as ruggedly handsome as ever, stars in the new film “The Marksman” as Jim, a widowered Arizona rancher with a history in the armed forces and a rather keen eye with a rifle scope—hence the title. Jim’s ranch abuts ... more >

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NEW RELEASE: Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House

The story behind the story
Liam Neeson, Diane Lane and Marton Csokas
Directed by Peter Landesman

Do sleeping dogs lie forever? The question can be asked about Peter Landesman’s biopic of Mark Felt, the FBI agent who leaked drop after drop of damning information regarding the Watergate burglary to Bod Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, until they turned into a flood that drowned Nixon and acolytes in 1974. If one relies on the story as it is told here, the dogs will indeed ... more >

Taken 2

When the sequel business takes on a humdrum quality
Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace
Directed by Olivier Megaton

Liam Neeson provides for one of the few real gruff everyman action heroes but “Taken 2,” unlike the first “Taken,” is more of the Neeson that I want to see less of, namely the "Clash of the Titans-Battleship" Neeson who’s in it for the paycheck. Neeson reprises his role as ex-CIA agent Brian Mills, who after the business in Paris from the first film can now add helicopter-parenting his teenage ... more >

Top-notch fx in THE WRATH OF THE TITANS – REVIEW

Feel the wrath, baby!
Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Rosamund Pike
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Homer’s memorized recitals of the stories of the heroes and gods certainly required a  attention span. The Wrath of The Titans certainly does not. It demands only the attention typically demanded by modern Hollywood blockbuster screenwriting. But would Homer, in all his “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog face wouldn’t close my eyes as I descended into Hades”-ness, been better served by ... more >

Unknown

Strangely Liam Neeson establishes himself as action hero
Liam Neeson, January Jones, and Diane Kruger
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Liam Neeson’s life gets "taken" and he has to fight to get it back in Unknown, the star’s best attempt so far at banking on his action hero personae. Sure Unknown is like a smorgasbord of other thrillers (the Bourne series and Frantic chief among them) rolled up into one but it does so many things right that I barely even noticed the resemblance until the lights in the theater came up. Neeson ... more >

The A-Team

There is no plan B
Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper and Jessica Biel
Directed by Joe Carnahan

My head still hurts. From the hectic opening minutes where director Joe Carnahan shoe-horns in action and character introductions as if he’s composing a movie trailer instead of a film to the moronically cartoonish characters to the onslaught of plotless, joyless, and thrill-less violence, “The A-Team” is hardly a movie, it’s a disaster of mind-numbing proportions. What story there is has ... more >