For such a thoughtful film, THE CREATOR is curiously underwritten. Building to several emotional crescendos during its two hours and thirteen minutes of running time, the intended resonance is, alas, subsumed by the spotty nature of a narrative that proceeds gamely from one set piece to another without giving us much in the way of… Read More »
GOOD NIGHT, OPPY — Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave have made wonderful documentaries over the years, but not one that they could share with kids. GOODNIGHT, OPPY changed that and it’s something White talked about when the three of us spoke on November 2, 2022. What comes across so clearly in this… Read More »
TERMINATOR: DARK FATE
And so we discover with TERMINATOR: DARK FATE that time is not an endless loop where events repeat zoetrope fashion. Rather it is a curly-cue, not unlike a fusilli. So it is that in this version of the saga, the apocalypse that was/will be Skynet never happened, and John Connor is a name unknown in… 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 »
BLING
BLING is a perfectly sweet, perfectly gentle, and perfectly harmless bit of fluffy animated comedy that will delight kids whose ages fall in the single digits. True love is the theme, and the difficulties of overcoming both self-doubt and Oscar (Jason Kravitz), an evil supervillain, provide the obstacles as mechanical whiz-kid Sam (Taylor Kitsch) spends… 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 »
MEET THE ROBINSONS
One day geeks may indeed rule the world, if they don’t already, that is, and when they do, we could do worse that the scenario presented in MEET THE ROBINSONS. Much worse. Based on the book, “A Day with the Robinsons” by William Joyce, this gentle tale of family lost and found is a wild… Read More »
AUTOMATA
AUTOMATA is a smooth jazz riff of a film noir that covers familiar territory with an intriguing twist, and a novel brand of hopeful melancholy. Its a melancholy time, here in the near future as the sun slowly kills off what is left of humankind. Its a time of huddled masses doubling-down in cities that… Read More »