THE FALL GUY is big fun made better by crackerjack cast and its whimsical penchant for self-reference. Based on the vintage television series of the same name, it reboots Colt Seaver (Ryan Gosling) as a stuntman for the hottest star in Hollywood, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and madly in love with Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt),… Read More »
OPPENHEIMER
Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER demands that we consider the father of the atomic bomb’s life in context, the which he does with stunning clarity considering the paradoxes the film considers. Like the quantum world revealed by the new physics that Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) brought to the United States between the world wars, things can work even… Read More »
JUNGLE CRUISE
Disney surprised us all when it turned one of Disneyland’s attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean, into a top-notch action/adventure/comedy. Alas, Disney has surprised us again, but with JUNGLE CRUISE, based on one of the venerable attractions from that ci-mentioned theme park, it’s more along the lines of disappointment. We relive that attraction in due course,… Read More »
A QUIET PLACE 2
There is something wonderfully cathartic about spending an hour-and-a-half or so being kept on the edge of one’s seat in a state of suspenseful terror. And thus does John Krasinski’s A QUIET PLACE 2 deliver. As excellent as it would have been as an entertainment if it had enjoyed its original, pre-pandemic release date, the… Read More »
WILD MOUNTAIN THYME
John Patrick Shanley’s WILD MOUNTAIN THYME, based on his play Outside Mulligan, is a charmer of an Irish muddle. Committed in its gentle eccentricity, it essays to find the mythic in the quotidien and darn near pulls it off. At least sly humor abounds as the determined Rosemary (Emily Blunt) pines for Anthony (Jamie Dornan)… Read More »
MARY POPPINS RETURNS
It’s a testament to just how good MARY POPPINS RETURNS is that the weakest part of this sequel to the 1964 film is the sequence with Meryl Streep. I hasten to point out the relative nature of the word “weakest”. Like everything else in this practically perfect cinematic exercise, it’s eye-popping and clever as the… Read More »
A QUIET PLACE
Why lob blood and guts when a lamp being knocked over can make you jump out of your seat?
SICARIO
There are many iconic moments in SICARIO, but the one that sticks in my mind is the one where dedicated and upright FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is being given the lowdown from glib and slippery DOJ agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) about what winning the war on drugs will really entail. The camera… Read More »
THE WOLFMAN
THE WOLFMAN hearkens back with great hope and poor follow-through to Universal’s classic horror films. There is much that is improved in this retelling of the original 1941 flick, and much that suffers a surfeit of technology. The story follows the original’s arc, with Lawrence Talbot suffering the bite of a werewolf, a band of… Read More »
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
GULLIVERS TRAVELS is a distressingly wretched updating of Jonathan Swifts classic tale. Denuded of Swifts deadly satire, it has become a dull vehicle for Jack Black to mug and frolic and generally find a million ways to not be entertaining. He plays the eponymous Gulliver, first name Lemuel, in a world where Swift never wrote… Read More »