A MONSTER CALLS begins, fittingly enough, with a child’s nightmare. We don’t have the context yet, but the primal fear gripping the boy clinging to the hand of a woman hanging over an abyss neatly sums up the emotional journey to come. The boy is Connor (Lewis MacDougall), and the woman, as we will shortly… Read More »
LIVE BY NIGHT
LIVE BY NIGHT is so sumptuously photographed that it can almost make up for its shortcomings. Based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, it has weathered its translation by becoming a slight story heinously overblown. It also suffers from too many false endings. So many, in fact, that I can’t vouch… Read More »
SILENCE
Academics are taught to write with a dispassionate yet highly detailed style for their scholarly treatises. That is the approach that Martin Scorsese has taken with SILENCE, his philosophically dense and immaculately rendered film of Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. The result is a maddening film more to be admired than enjoyed as… Read More »
LONG WAY NORTH
LONG WAY NORTH uses deceptively simple animation to tell an epic adventure. At its center is Sasha (Christa Théret), a spirited and determined 15-year-old set on restoring her family’s honor, and the legacy her of her beloved grandfather, Oloukine (Féodor Atkine) an arctic explorer gone missing on his last expedition. It would be a monumental undertaking… Read More »
THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT (Le tout nouveau testament )
THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT is a clever and wise deconstruction of dogma and patriarchy. Taking as its premise that God (Benoît Poelvoorde) is real, but less than benevolent, it gives us the story of his other child, the one who didn’t get her own book and who doesn’t like the status quo and takes it… Read More »
PASSENGERS
PASSENGERS is a long, increasingly preposterous slog whose most tantalizing element is the question of why Jennifer Lawrence looks so very much like a young Renee Zellweger in some shots. Has there always been such a striking resemblance, or is it that this film is so tedious and predictable that one has the time to… Read More »
WHY HIM?
Long before he was mild-mannered chemistry teacher turned fearsome drug lord on Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston made his mark in television comedy by, among other things, keeping Malcolm in the middle, and tending to Seinfeld’s teeth. Those comedic chops stand him in good stead for WHY HIM?, an intermittently hilarious hybrid of the buddy film… Read More »
ASSASSIN’S CREED
I am not familiar with the video game on which ASSASSIN’S CREED is based, so I cannot speak to whether or not this cinematic translation has captured its essence. I can speak, however, to the befuddling bifurcation of said translation. Part straight-up action film, part would-be contemplation of the pros and cons of free will,… Read More »
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
Leave us pass over in silence, for now, the more irksome plot devices in ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY. Instead, let us focus on what a fine action/adventure film it is. This prequel to EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE takes a line from that film and builds an impressive feature-length story about the Star… Read More »
ALLIED
There is an artistic license that we allow films that sweep us along when their emotional resonance is overpowering. Minor plot points that aren’t resolved, or factual errors. For an example of the latter, one need look no further than the Letters of Transit, desired by so many in CASABLANCA. No such thing. Yet it… Read More »
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 12
- Next Page »