KNIVES OUT takes a brisk pace with its cinematic legerdemain as its cast expertly calibrate their performances so that arch never strays into the certain disaster of becoming artificial. The result is a giddily entertaining, emotionally engaging film that sets a new standard for its genre, and, if there is any justice, will launch the Benoit Blanc franchise.
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
The stakes have been raised so many times with event flicks that, when approaching one, hope is always tempered with experience about what to expect, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson. With AVENGERS: ENDGAME, though, hope wins out. The spectacle is everything it should be, and the story, of necessity a meandering thing, is nonetheless sustained by… Read More »
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
For sheer value-for-money, you can’t top AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. It’s pure entertainment with an endless parade of the kind of whiz-bang special effects, not quite sloppy sentiment, and a constant barrage of the quips and banter that define grace under pressure in the Marvel Universe. Plus, pretty much everyone from the MCU finds his or… Read More »
PUNCTURE
PUNCTURE is a remarkable story told in a disappointingly unremarkable way. Based on a true story, this tale of a small-time lawyers taking on Big Pharma offers no surprises about the evil that the profit motive can produce, but it does have one enormously redeeming quality that makes it worth watching. Chris Evans. As Mike… Read More »
MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS
MARVELS THE AVENGERS is an audaciously ambitious film with a singularly Herculean task. It must take the disparate superheroes of previous films, their unique tones and styles, and mold them into a cohesive work. Its not unlike the plot of the film itself, which finds Shield, the super secret organization that keeps the Earth safe… Read More »
ICEMAN, THE
That THE ICEMAN is a film eminently worth seeing is a tribute to Michael Shannon. The true story of Richard Kuklinski, aka The Iceman, is a conventionally told tale of organized crime, but Shannon, as the cold-blooded hitman with a schizophrenic tenderness for his family is riveting. Through the film is a lesser light, as… Read More »
CAPTAIN AMERICA — THE WINTER SOLDIER
fIn CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, Captain Steve Rodgers, aka Captain America (Chris Evans), is experiencing an existential crisis. Its not just that he has a lot of catching up to do after being cryogenically asleep for seventy years or so. The novelty of Thai food and the internet dont get him down, its the… Read More »
CELLULAR
There are as many conceptions of Hell as there are people who imagine what it must be like. CELLULAR presents a very particular one. The one where the damned soul is doomed to wander in Los Angeles traffic for all eternity on an endless and hopeless quest, thwarted at every turn by traffic jams, idiot… Read More »
SUNSHINE
With SUNSHINE, Danny Boyle once again switches film genres with a masterly touch. Having explored gritty realism with TRAINSPOTTING, social satire with SHALLOW GRAVE, whimsical fantasy with MILLIONS, and apocalyptic horror with 28 DAYS LATER, he has moved on to science fiction, albeit science fiction that also functions as a white-knuckle thriller. For all the… Read More »