Based on the novel by Maria Semple, WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE is a tale of artistic vision quashed by its run-ins with the crasser elements of reality, and the consequences of living the resulting inauthentic life with Cate Blanchett perfection as Bernadette, the eccentric anti-social wife of a Seattle Microsoft bigwig. Her skirmishes with her… Read More »
ALIEN: COVENANT
ALIEN COVENANT is a mixed bag. As a horror movie, it is unimpeachable, adding an extra self-refractive layer of pleasure to an audience that knows exactly what is lurking there in the giant deserted spaceship that our intrepid space colonists discover. As a vehicle for advancing the meta-story of the Alien franchise, it is far… Read More »
SPOTLIGHT
SPOTLIGHT does more than dissect the passions at work in the investigative news process. As riveting as the specifics are of how The Boston Globe’s special investigative team chased down the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, it’s the larger question, that of how wide-spread sexual abuse of children by priests could have flourished for… Read More »
THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT’s Heart of Darkness
In retrospect, the excesses of Abu Ghraib were all too accurately predicted by the now infamous behavioral experiment conducted in 1971 by Stanford professor, Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup). The dramatization as THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT wisely takes the clinical approach, employing the detachment of the scientific method in recreating the events that are as… Read More »
BIG FISH
BIG FISH may be Tim Burtons most magical film to date. Paradoxically, its also one rooted firmly in reality, a la ED WOOD. Dont let that throw you. This is a landscape of the imagination as potent as anything Burton conjured up with EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There is a giant named… Read More »