Isaac's Film Reviews

Unchained indeed Full, spoiler-free review by Isaac Handelman Whereas some directors’ films can be identified due to their thematic similarities, the same cannot be said for the films of Quentin Tarantino. Instead, the iconic director who was brought to fame by his 1995 masterpiece Pulp Fiction , leaves his mark on films not through similarities in subject matter or narrative, but in the absurd amount of graphic violence contained within each of his features. With Django Unchained , Tarantino brings his gleefully twisted style to new heights in what may be his boldest picture since Pulp Fiction . Through the buckets of blood, does Django retain the strange cinematic magic that Tarantino imbues each of his films with? Let’s find out. Unchained takes place in the American south a few years before the start of the Civil War and centers on Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who's freed by Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and contracted to partake in various bounty hunts with his rescuer b...

Almost there and not back again Full spoiler-free review by Isaac Handelman The Hobbit rivals and trumps its predecessor Lord of the Rings trilogy in many ways. Its orchestral score is epic, its visuals are sleek and often stunning, its scope is sweeping, its performances are top-notch and it pays plenty of homage to J.R.R. Tolkien’s original work. Yet, through all of this, something seems to be missing. It’s not an integral piece of the puzzle -- nothing that stops The Hobbit from being a riotously entertaining romp through Middle-earth -- but it does lack a certain spark that made Peter Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy so successful and beloved. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months or have no preconceptions as to what The Hobbit is, you should know that Peter Jackson (or perhaps his studio heads) have split Tolkien’s original, somewhat short novel into three-separate films, the second and third of which are currently bound to December 2013 and...