It’s hard, if not impossible, to believe that relic hunting really could be as thrilling, exciting or harrowing as depicted in the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies, after all, what is it that most paleontologist do but chisel and sweep away bits of stone from fossilized bone, right? And while that remains largely at the core of Todd Douglas Miller’s dino hunter doc, there’s a grisly eruption in the middle; a Brontosaurus big “What the Fuck” if you will, that shoots the somber dusting and digging off into a disturbing web of jurisdiction abuse, injustice and tangled land and property rights.
Back in 1990, the Black Hills Institute of Geographical Research in South Dakota, essentially a group of dino-loving paleontologists without Ph.Ds or academic grants, discovered the most complete and largest Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton to date. Priorly, only twelve had been found—lucky number 13! The find was purely accidental, a flat tire, heavy fog and further unfortunate tidings had the crew heading to town to get the SUV fixed but one, Susan Hendrickson, decided to remain and mill about the weather-worn ravines of the Dakota Black Hills. That’s when lightning struck. Continue reading
Old-school old guys schooling buff newbies with plenty of tongue-in-cheek ha-has was the way of the first films. “Expendables 3” starts off that way, somewhere in a Baltic/Eastern Bloc country with Barney Ross (Stallone), the series quarterback of a covert military ops group, springing an old colleague (Wesley Snipes) amid great, witty barbs about “tax evasion” and “blades.” Then it’s onto Mogadishu, where Barney and crew go on a routine mission to stop an arms trade and get their asses handed to them. The fly in the ointment, and adding to the heavy list of new names, is Mel Gibson as Conrad Stonebanks, who’s as bad-assed as the whole Expendables crew and arguably the dark side of Gibson’s already certifiable Riggs persona from the “Lethal Weapon” franchise.
“Storm” is a humble effort with the budget of “Sharknado” and the big-screen aspirations of “Twister.” Even bolstered by a meaty budget, that 1996 film was no masterpiece, but it had masterful thespians Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the cast, and flying cows. It also had well regarded cinematographer Jan de Bont (he shot “Die Hard” and “Basic Instinct”) taking the reins (his prior effort was “Speed”), which in a way ties us back to “Storm”: Director Steven Quale has toiled as second unit director on James Cameron projects. He might not quite have his hands around sculpting a full-bodied drama just yet, but the one thing he clearly does know are FX. The rendering of the massive twisters – one a flaming tornado – is vivid and viscerally done. As far as character and plot, that’s pretty much the eternal overcast sky while sitting in a steel-plated storm-chasing vehicle hoping for lightning and mayhem to strike.
Colin Firth gets a big scene-chewing role as Stanley Crawford, a 1920s illusionist who takes the stage as a Fu Manchu-like incarnation known as the Great Wei Ling Soo. He wows audiences, making elephants disappear and sawing women in half and, like Houdini did in his time, debunks hoaxes, which Stanley agrees to do when fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) asks him to come to a country villa in France to expose a young American woman shaking down a susceptible and well-off widow (Jackie Weaver). The young American woman in question, Sophie Baker, is played by none other than Emma Stone, a big-eyed cutie with auburn locks and by logistical association alone muse du jour to Allen. But she’s no Diane Keaton, not even a Mia Farrow or Mia Sorvino, for that matter. She’s game, but asked to do a lot with a little and beyond her range. Thankfully she has Firth to play off of, and he’s masterful. Initially when the game is afoot in the gorgeous greenery of Southern France, there’s promise and a playfulness in the air. The film suggests twist and turns to come, false reveals and oneupmanship, but then romance floats into the picture, and the notion of god too. What a buzzkill.
What to know: After losing his mother to cancer in the ’80s, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt of “Parks and Recreation”) is abducted by a spaceship. Flash forward a quarter-century to a galaxy far away in another universe, or something like that, and Quill is a treasure hunter seeking out high-risk items à la Indiana Jones, with the attitude to boot. Smugly he goes by the moniker Star-Lord as if he were Banksy, though no one knows who he is – that is, until he recovers an orb with some of the empowering infinity stones in it and everyone, including the evil Ronan (a cloaked and face-painted Lee Pace from “Halt and Catch Fire” ) and his overlord Thanos (voiced by Josh Brolin), want him and the orb. 
For What it's Worth 