MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is a film that plays with its audience’s sense of normality. Beginning in the conventional and slowly, almost imperceptibly, moving us from the quotidian drama of a kidnapped child and a father’s unconditional love, into a boldly unconventional consideration of that elusive point where science and spirituality merge. There is nothing predictable here,… 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 »
TOO LATE
Kierkegaard, noted Existentialist and proto-Absurdist, once opined that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. As a cinematic exploration of the tragic and comedic implications of that, there is Dennis Hauck’s wistful neo-Noir, TOO LATE, a film that employs a strategic insouciance as it nimbly plays with the time/space continuum… 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 »
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE
The world of JJ Abrams is rife with Easter Eggs and red herrings. He has such a penchant for them that one can be forgiven for finding them even when they may or may not be intentional. Take, for example, a conversation in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, a film he produced, but did not write or… Read More »
THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT
As is the wont with these franchises based on young adult novels, THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT, the third in the series, begins where the last one left off. No flashback montage, no character narration bringing us up to date. Instead, there’s just a quick reminder that Jeanine is dead, and that everyone on screen is… Read More »
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is a first-rate existential horror film, as well as a psychological thriller. Writer/director Perry Blackshear understands more than just how to create evocative, even sumptuous, visuals, he knows how to use those visuals in the service of telling a story that is as emotionally engrossing as it is suspenseful while it explores the… Read More »
EYE IN THE SKY
As if we needed to be reminded of what a loss Alan Rickman’s death represents to cinema, we have his final speech in Gavin Hood’s incisive consideration of collateral damage and the ethics of warfare, EYE IN THE SKY.
YOU’RE KILLING ME
YOU’RE KILLING ME is a wry and delightful black comedy of very bad manners, of which murder may not be the most heinous. In it, a group of hip twenty-somethings on the fringes of show biz negotiate awkward game nights, the finer points of dating etiquette, and the protocols of disposing of a dead body.… Read More »
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