THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an impudent, pugnacious comedy that uses the synthetic nature of its stylized homage idiom to be a whip-smart consideration of race, gender, politics, situational ethics, and very, very bad teeth. The genre is the western, but the tone is thoroughly modern as a group of the damned journey through the desolate… Read More »
CRIMSON PEAK
If CRIMSON PEAK offered nothing more than the creepiest bathtub specter since THE SHINING, it would still qualify as a monstrously entertaining film. But this is Guillermo del Toro directing and co-writing, and so the lushness of subtext mirrors the classically Gothic idiom of the story. The paranormal is the least disturbing of the elements… Read More »
SICARIO
There are many iconic moments in SICARIO, but the one that sticks in my mind is the one where dedicated and upright FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is being given the lowdown from glib and slippery DOJ agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) about what winning the war on drugs will really entail. The camera… Read More »
Dreary DARK PLACES
DARK PLACES is awash with dark moodiness as it tells a raggedy story that suffers from a failure of to find a narrative structure as strong or as compelling as the performance of his star, Charlize Theron. Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, on whose novel of the same name GONE GIRL was based,… Read More »
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Is A Most Excellent Film
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR begins, appropriately enough, with its protagonist, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) running. Though this is merely jogging through the snowy landscape of 1981 New York, he will spend the rest of the film running more purposefully either literally, figuratively, or both, as he scrambles to overcome fate and the fickleness of human… Read More »
MOON
Duncan Jones’ debut feature, MOON, is a sharp and intelligent consideration of reality itself. An engrossing tale set in the near future on the dark side of our planet’s satellite, it probes the equally dark side of the human condition and in the process does what the best science fiction ought to do, which is… 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 »
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
What SNOW WHITE was to the advancement of hand-drawn animation into a genuine art form, so is THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN to animation derived from motion capture and generated from a computer. Visually, it is a thing of singular and striking beauty. Story-wise, it is just as sublime, presenting a thumping good tale of action… Read More »
SOLARIS
In a move as audacious as it is disastrous, Steve Soderbergh has decided to push the edges of what filmmaking can be and created in SOLARIS not so much a motion picture as a still life. One that is more sleep-inducing than a warm glass of milk and a bottle of Seconal. It is remarkable… Read More »
THE RAVEN
RAVEN is a mess of a movie. An infuriating mix of amateurish writing and flowery antique speech; of sublime romance and hopeless pedantry; of atmospheric melancholy and risible smugness; of pointless melodrama and a movingly poignant performance by John Cusack as the damned soul, Edgar Allen Poe. The premise is Poe’s mysterious last few days… Read More »
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- Next Page »