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 »
MEG 2: THE TRENCH
MEG 2: THE TRENCH is a wildly uneven effort, spending as it does most of its time as dud of an action drama and the rest as a rapturously unhinged action comedy. It is far more successful at the latter. Fortunately, star Jason Statham doesn’t let a creaky script (and that’s what we have here)… Read More »
HAUNTED MANSION
This is the not the first time that Disney has tried to cinema-ize its Haunted Mansion attraction. That perennial favorite got the film treatment 20 years ago with Eddie Murphy heading an indifferent story and a sentimental subplot that I found to be more interesting than anything involving Mr. Murphy. Alas, this latest attempt fares… Read More »
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is pure entertainment. It is incontrovertible evidence that star/produce Tom Cruise understands the job description of an action star, giving us a series of breathtaking set pieces with (almost) painless exposition, and just enough plot to keep the whole improbable structure intact as it barrels along at near-light… Read More »
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
And so we come full circle in the Indiana Jones saga as Indy once again faces the Nazis, this time while going in search of the Dial of Destiny. It’s a bittersweet farewell (unless it makes enough money to tempt all concerned with another installment), rife with complicated action sequences that don’t all succeed in… Read More »
ASTEROID CITY
Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY presents us a dream within a dream as it ponders our place in the cosmos by setting its story in three separate realities that bump into each other the way subatomic particles swarm around an atomic nucleus. Is it synchronicity or chance or some other cosmic law of which humanity is… Read More »
BIOSPHERE
Click here to listen to the interview with director/co-writer Mel Eslyn. At the beginning of BIOSPHERE, the world as we know it has ended, leaving only two human beings left alive. They are Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K. Brown), and they have gone from being the apex species on the planet to finding… Read More »
KANDAHAR
KANDAHAR has the virtue of being more than a quotidian action tale of espionage and its attendant machinations. By taking a brooding rather than kinetic approach, it becomes a bittersweet meditation on, as one character sums up very neatly, the idea that modern wars are not meant to be won. The implications of that provide… Read More »
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4
What is most striking about JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4, and JW:C4 is a very striking film, is how emotionally engaging it is as is goes about the business of filling the screen to bursting with gloriously choreographed, ultra-violent action sequences. What in other films of this ilk would provide a paper-thin motivation for its protagonists… Read More »
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS is a big and bubbly adventure overflowing with wisecracks, mythical creatures and, for the good people who have taken in so many foster children, an explanation for why their house keeps getting hit by lightning. A worthy sequel to its original, it picks up with Billy Batson (Asher Angel) still… Read More »
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