George Miller first sent Mad Max blazing across the sere post-apocalyptic landscape in 1979 and thence onto cinematic legend. Sequels followed. Mel Gibson in the eponymous role rose to international fame and, eventually, Miller moved on to different sorts of classics with BABE and HAPPY FEET. Now, thirty years and more later, he is revisiting… Read More »
IT FOLLOWS and It’s Relentless
IT FOLLOWS slyly juxtaposes the familiar with the alien as it tells its exceptionally effective tale of terror. The clichéd tropes of low-budget horror — the remote lake house, the eager and nubile kids having sex in the back seat of a car, a terrified girl in high heels and lingerie running in terror down… Read More »
DANNY COLLINS Overcomes
Narratively, DANNY COLLINS commits more than a few faux pas, but there is such warmth to the melancholy of a life discovered to have been wasted, that the winces they produce are worth enduring. Writer/director Dan Fogelman (CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE) may be too quick the play the melodrama card, but I prefer to focus on… Read More »
RUN ALL NIGHT with Liam Neeson
There is a reason that there is a rigid formula for Liam Neeson action films: it has a tendency to hit more than it misses. In RUN ALL NIGHT, the tropes are all present and accounted for with the variations that are permitted within the formula’s rules. Neeson is the everyman with, you will pardon… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
Unsteady UNFINISHED BUSINESS
And so in UNFINISHED BUSINESS, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT discovers that business as usual in the 21st century is less about facing the difficulties of conformity than it is about taking a cue from the local anarchists. In the spirit of that anarchy, the film refuses to conform to the principle of… Read More »
FOCUS Needs Some Adjustment
Glenn Ficarra and John Renqua have made some films that are close to my heart. BAD SANTA, I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS, CRAZY STUPID LOVE are movies that are funny and smart without resorting to schmaltz. Instead, they are subversive satires about human nature, and what happens when wide-eyed innocence meets conniving manipulator. The same… Read More »
Al Pacino Exalts THE HUMBLING
THE HUMBLING is a throwback to a time when attention spans were longer, characters were created out of complex and even contradictory behaviors, and the story was an extension of the characters, not a glib contrivance. Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Philip Roth, it is a study of Simon Axler, an actor crumbling as he feels his craft drifting away leaving him in limbo between reality and delusion, comedy and tragedy, meaning and nothingness.
MORTDECAI is DOA
Sneaking into theaters without benefit of a press screening, MORTDECAI is a tragically unfunny attempt at lighthearted comedy. Based on the novel Don’t Point that That Thing at Me” by Kyril Bongfiglio, its efforts at whimsy fall flat, while its attempts to attain the quirky begin and end with the waxy curls of Johnny Depp’s… 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 »