There is such a delicious and perfectly logical, surprise in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, that it alone would be worth the investment of your time and your money to see it in a theater. Fortunately, there is so much more to enjoy as Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and those in his orbit face a future… Read More »
SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME
We learn many things in SPIDERMAN FAR FROM HOME. We learn that not only are the Dutch polyglots, but also that they are the nicest people on earth, even when a private jet is making hash of their iconic tulip fields. We learn that saving the planet is just as important as getting that first… Read More »
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
Leaving aside what might otherwise be a richly nuanced discussion of why we need another Spider-man reboot so soon, it is with delight and relief that I report its success. Tom Holland takes on the red spandex and the ironic wisecracks as Peter Parker, the brilliant high-school kid whose bite from a radioactive spider has… Read More »
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
THE LINCOLN LAWYER is a smart, taut, and well-told neo-noir. The setting is Los Angeles, among the low-lifes and the well-to-do, where they meet and the consequences thereof. It follows the formula for such genre flicks, but has an impudent originality in the telling. The titular lawyer, Michael Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a savvy practitioner… Read More »
PARENTAL GUIDANCE
PARENTAL GUIDANCE is a sloppy concretion inadvertently showcasing pretty much everything that can be done wrong in filmmaking short of forgetting to remove the lens cap. Though in this case, that last might actually have been an improvement. The story is incoherent, the characters are as thin as the wispiest of vapors, and the jokes,… Read More »
THE GURU
THE GURU is a fluffy confection that mixes the exuberance of Bollywood with measured lunacy of 30s screwball comedies and adds just a dash of The Joy of Sex to leaven the mixture with a millennial sensibility. Our hero is Ramu, an Indian dance teacher who was marked as a child by seeing John Travolta… Read More »
HAPPY ACCIDENTS
There comes a time in any romantic relationship when the couple in question drops the carefully cultivated dating personas. You know, when the pleasant, smiling, eternally non-plussed character designed to impress the other party gives way to the real person underneath. Sometimes this reveals delightful quirks that only serve to endear the one to the… Read More »
ALFIE
The thing about Jude Law is that he is so unbelievably beautiful. Such is his pulchritude, not to mention his irresistible onscreen charm, that its easy to overlook the undeniable acting chops that are greater even than the sum of his more ephemeral gifts. In ALFIE, Charles Shyer’s re-make of the 60s classic that starred… Read More »
IN THE BEDROOM
Don’t jump to any conclusions in the first 15 minutes or so of IN THE BEDROOM about where it’s heading. Though the acting is all very fine and the direction skillful, you might thing that you have pretty much figured out everything that’s going to happen after the first 10 minutes or so. And then… Read More »
CYRUS
A man, a woman, her son. It’s a situation of jealous hostility explored many times, but never more honestly, more painfully, or with bigger laughs than in Jay and Mark Duplass CYRUS. Made with an improvisational style that perfectly evokes the awkward immediacy of three people working through a new relationship that changes all their… Read More »