The greatest virtue of PAPA: HEMINGWAY IN CUBA is that it was filmed in Cuba just after it was re-opened to the United States. It still looks the way it did over 50 years ago, when the story is set, which not too long before the United States embargo, protesting Castro’s revolution, went into place.… Read More »
HIGH-RISE
There is nothing subtle about HIGH-RISE, a savage allegorical satire of manic energy and pointed symbolism. Based on the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, it stars Tom Hiddleston as an urbane neurologist about to discover his place in the social order, and Jeremy Irons as The Architect (how Masonic?), the emotionally constipated… Read More »
GREEN ROOM
THE GREEN ROOM is technically flawless. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier has crafted a horror film that plays upon the well-chosen phobias about extremists, backwoods rough justice, and the down side of the music business. Yet, for all the graphic flourishes of dog-mangled throats, a close-up belly slitting, and the results of gunfire meeting flesh, this is… Read More »
LOUDER THAN BOMBS
LOUDER THAN BOMBS begins with a perfect picture of family love. Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is marveling at his newborn as his wife Amy, (Megan Ketch) looks on beaming. Jonah is beaming, too, and he is aghast that he has forgotten to bring his wife the food she had requested when she discovered that the hospital tray… Read More »
A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING
Tom Hanks once again reminds us that he is the quintessential American Everyman with a deeply affecting turn as the symbol of modern American enterprise in A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING, based on the novel of the same name by Dave Eggers, and adapted by Tom Tykwer. Think of it as an updated version of… Read More »
ELVIS & NIXON
If the essence of acting is the willing suspension of disbelief, then you will find no better example than that shared by Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey in and as, respectively, ELVIS & NIXON. Based on the improbable meeting between the two in December 1970, it is a fanciful, and at times unexpectedly moving, reimagining… Read More »
CRIMINAL
CRIMINAL is a trifle of a thriller. Sure, guns are fired, things explode, and Ryan Reynolds meets a grisly end shortly after the flick begins, but the necessary tension to keep us all on the edge of our seats is noticeably lacking. What we are left with is an intriguing premise, Gary Oldman at his… Read More »
THE BOSS
Melissa McCarthy may be the funniest woman working in film or on television today. Certainly, there is no one funnier, and no one more adept, at finding both humor and pathos in a given situation. When armed with a great script — think THE HEAT or her breakout role in BRIDESMAIDS — she is a… Read More »
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
For most of BATMAN V SUPERMAN’s bloviated pretension, I was merely bored. This half-baked idea studded with ponderous pronouncements, shockingly sedate action sequences, and the simulacrum of serious philosophical inquiry plodded along, weighed down by an overstuffed plot and an underdeveloped narrative. But when we arrived at a meticulous recreation of the deposition from the… Read More »
THE BRONZE
If the lead character in THE BRONZE were a guy, played by Seth Rogan or Jonah Hill, the raunchiness, bad attitude, and permanent scowl would be considered edgy, honest, and even hip. But Hope Annabelle Greggory isn’t the male of the species, and what is acceptable as fun and iconoclastic for those with two X-chromosomes… Read More »
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