BLACK PANTHER is the standard by which all other superhero movies this year will be measured. Maybe this decade. Showcasing the expected show-stopping special effects, a rich mythology from the Marvel comic on which it is based, and plenty of rousing action that is both imaginative (weaponized rhinoceroses) and genuinely suspenseful, it gets the most… Read More »
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT is being sold as a comedy and that shortchanges everyone. Based on the memoir by Kim Barker, “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” about her time in the early 2000s as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, it is a trenchant look at media, politics, and the separate reality that… Read More »
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
And so it is our last visit to Middle Earth, and a bittersweet one it is. Peter Jackson’s finale to his pair of trilogies is a triumph of spectacle and humanity, notwithstanding that the human beings of the piece are not the main characters. It’s only flaw, and that is a relative one, is that… Read More »
THE WORLD’S END
The Cornetto Trilogy comes to a superb conclusion with THE WORLDS END. Director Edgar Wright again teams with the regular cast of co-writer Simon Pegg as the anti-hero, and Nick Frost as the humorless corporate lawyer, along with newcomers Eddie Marsan as the grinning bunny rabbit of a car salesman, Paddy Considine as the enterperneur… Read More »
THE HOBBIT — THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is the best middle film that money and talent can produce. This is not an indictment, it is, rather, an embrace of the inherent problem of the second of three filmic installments, viz to wit, if you havent seen the first one, there is little even the most resourceful… Read More »
THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS
PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS is a gleefully revisionist take on pirates, royalty, and the early 19th-century scientific community. Brought to animated life by the fine folks at Aardman Studio with their distinctive stop-motion brilliance, and a dash of CGI, the film also features 3-D that is used cleverly but without ostentation. Clever is the byword… Read More »
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
I am one of those slavish devotees of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhker Trilogy who can, as a result of manic bouts of reading (the books), watching (the BBC television series) and listening (to the original incarnation produced by BBC radio) recite vast swaths of text. It’s a skill that provokes delight in some, consternation in others,… Read More »