For sheer value-for-money, you can’t top AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. It’s pure entertainment with an endless parade of the kind of whiz-bang special effects, not quite sloppy sentiment, and a constant barrage of the quips and banter that define grace under pressure in the Marvel Universe. Plus, pretty much everyone from the MCU finds his or… Read More »
READY PLAYER ONE
With Steven Spielberg, sometimes, most of the time, you get E.T: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. Sometimes, though, you get 1941. It’s not that READY PLAYER ONE rivals the sheer ineptitude of the latter, but it is definitely skirting the shoals. With Spielberg, one has come to expect much, and so when presented with a flick that is… Read More »
BLACK PANTHER
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 »
FUTURE ’38
There is a dividing line for those contemplating a viewing of FUTURE ’38. It has to do with wordplay. If you love puns you will be charmed by the whole-hearted impudence of this self-conscious parody. If not, best to move along, though you will miss a fine excursion into dead-pan drollery. As premise, we have… Read More »
DOWNSIZING
DOWNSIZING is a film that cries out to be admired. Pondered. Parsed. Philosophical propositions and social commentary flit by in a mad whirl of arch observation and deadpan dea as we are invited to consider a veritable cornucopia of topics, all eminently worthy of examination. The class struggle and the human propensity for prejudice; the… Read More »
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI
Good and evil are inextricably entwined in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. It makes for a pleasing metaphysical subtext to a film with spectacular action sequences, pointed references to the political economics of the class struggle, and a character in Benicio Del Toro whose nihilism carries with it a whiff of Zen philosophy at its… Read More »
JUSTICE LEAGUE
JUSTICE LEAGUE is a film with many problems. Some are inherent in an origin-style story that introduces several characters to what the filmmakers hope will be an audience eager to follow their further, individual, adventures. Some are just inexplicable. Take the plot device that is nothing short of asinine, and which I can’t discuss without… Read More »
MOTHER!
From his debut feature, PI, Darren Aronofsky’s work has never strayed far from the metaphysical. There was the overt Kabbalah that infused NOAH, and even REQUIEM FOR A DREAM was as much about the psychic destruction of souls as it was about any physical degradation of the protagonists. And so it is with MOTHER!, an… Read More »
IT
The evil that lurks in the sewers beneath Derry, Maine, has nothing on the evil lurking in the homes of that community.
PILGRIMAGE
PILGRIMAGE tells a dour tale of faith and fanaticism. Set in 13th-century Ireland, it blends mysticism with realpolitik in a time and place so distant from ours that a subtext of imperialism might be almost too subtle, while the vicious commonplaces of summary justice, revenge, and casual violence are all too vivid A prologue set… Read More »
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