Word: speeded
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...heroism is the theme of the first two blockbuster movies of the summer season. We saw it last weekend when Iron Man, the one where arms merchant Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) builds himself a heart, opened to $102 million at the domestic box office last weekend. Now comes Speed Racer, based on the '60s Japanese animated TV series, Mach GoGoGo. It's the new sound-and-light show from brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, who in 1999 stamped the template for high-IQ effects entertainment with The Matrix. I don't think it'll do half of Iron...
...Like the Downey film, Speed Racer is plenty satisfying in traditional action-movie terms. It boasts enough auto-erotic car-nage to make Grand Theft Auto IV seem, by comparison, like a junkyard jalopy. Beyond that, there's the edifying display of people taking control of their own destinies by building beautiful, useful machines. The heroes of Speed Racer and Iron Man could be the garage geeks who paved Silicon Valley with cybergold; or Hollywood's visual-effects alchemists, translating their fantasies into pixels to create gorgeous movies like these. Iron Man and Speed Racer are tributes to practical ingenuity...
...Speed Racer is the familiar fable of the little man fighting the big corporation, the inventor vs the exploiter, the young athlete whose talents would be used and abused by the establishment. In the Racer clan, Pops (John Goodman) is a mechanic turned car designer. Mom (Susan Sarandon) is the family's emotional center, a font of dewy wisdom. Older brother Rex (Scott Porter) is a champion racer who confides some of his Zen driving secrets to his younger brother Speed before mysteriously disappearing after a car crash. Years later, Speed (Emile Hirsch) is ready to carry on the Racer...
...rigger-in-chief is industry titan E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam, channeling Brit pundit Christopher Hitchens as his most pompestuous), who occupies the opposite pole of plutocracy from Tony Stark. Royalton doesn't make things; he crushes people, to attain "the unassailable might of money." Speed's victory would be one for the independent entrepreneurs (the Racers are literally a Mom-and-Pops outfit) over the-global industrial complex. Which is fine, except that the Wachowskis, backed by uber-producer Joel Silver and Warner Bros., are not exactly underdogs. Indeed, they need vast resources to mount the lavish spectacle they...
...Lavish indeed, and relentless - a hallucinatory workout for the eyes. On his show this Monday, Stephen Colbert described Speed Racer as "the classic story of boy meets seizure-inducing lights," and noted that, to get a sense of the picture's cinema style, you should "put 80 pounds of fireworks into an industrial dryer, crawl right in there with them, turn it on and then light the fuse. It'll give you a good idea of the visual onslaught you'll be enduring." As usual with Colbert, the humor highlighted a sneaky truth: in its assaultive creativity, its high-speed...