It feels like the right thing to do when reviewing MEGALOPOLIS: A FABLE is to wait for the director’s cut. It’s an impulse as fractured as the film itself considering that Francis Ford Coppola sank his own money into making this film and thereby had final cut. Still, for all the disjointed execution this frustrating… Read More »
WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE
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 »
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM
There is no doubt that part of the appeal of an action film is the chance to see things out of the ordinary. Like things being blown up real good, or brawls that shatter the laws of physics. And so it is with JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM, based on the graphic novel series. … Read More »
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 starts with Mr. Wick doing what he does best. That would be mowing his way through a horde of adversaries with a cool precision and a lethal effect. While he is doing this, we are reminded, or introduced to, if we haven’t see the first film, just who exactly Mr. Wick… Read More »
PASSENGERS
PASSENGERS is a long, increasingly preposterous slog whose most tantalizing element is the question of why Jennifer Lawrence looks so very much like a young Renee Zellweger in some shots. Has there always been such a striking resemblance, or is it that this film is so tedious and predictable that one has the time to… Read More »
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
For most of BATMAN V SUPERMAN’s bloviated pretension, I was merely bored. This half-baked idea studded with ponderous pronouncements, shockingly sedate action sequences, and the simulacrum of serious philosophical inquiry plodded along, weighed down by an overstuffed plot and an underdeveloped narrative. But when we arrived at a meticulous recreation of the deposition from the… Read More »
PREDATORS
PREDATORS is a murky, would-be pedantic, mess of a flick. It goes to the trouble of informing its audience that it is a continuation of 1987s PREDATOR, but takes no trouble before or after to deliver any reason for revisiting the premise of humans hunted for sport by aliens who have conquered invisibility cloaks. The… Read More »
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
With ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 we learn two important lessons. One, that remakes, in this case of John Carpenter’s 1976 original of the same name, fail, and badly, much more often than they succeed. Two, that Laurence Fishburne has so much raw talent, smooth charisma, and irresistible personal magnetism that he can make even trash like this… Read More »
AKEELAH AND THE BEE
What AKEELAH AND THE BEE offers is a sweet, unpretentious, and positive affirmation in the very best sense of that phrase. While the specifics are the struggles of a kid from the ‘hood to make it to the national spelling bee, at heart, and it has a lot of heart, it’s about learning to be… Read More »
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 asks the cinematic question, “Why wander away inconspicuously from the scene of the latest mission when you can speed away at full throttle on the Tiber River?” It’s a spy fantasy and the answers to questions like that, and there are lots of them throughout the needless running time of over two hours,… Read More »