Kurt Loder Reviews Stoker and Jack the Giant Slayer
For Stoker, his first venture into English-language filmmaking, South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook deploys his gift for flamboyant imagery and eccentric audio effects in the service of a chilly Southern Gothic creepfest. Stoker is a great-looking movie with an appropriately dark-and-stormy score, but as Kurt Loder reports, it also has some unfortunate problems.
Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer, on the other hand, is a very expensive kids' movie, shot in 3D, packed with CGI, topped with a PG-13 rating, and happily dispatched to the nation's megaplexes. A lot of skill and commitment have gone into this film (Singer is too good a director to hack out a piece of genre product), and kids may well love it. There's a little romance, but it doesn't get in the way; and some of the mild gross-out flourishes, like a snot-eating giant, seem aimed directly at 10-year-old boys.