Revenge fantasy in cinema will never go out of style, but in a more sensitive age, vigilante films without a thoughtful touch can meet their own swift and merciless end. Take Eli Roth‘s neo-conservative wet dream remake of “Death Wish,” recently savaged by audiences and critics for its soulless, unthinking vengeance. The masculine, gung-ho individualism of this genre, aggressively promoting Second Amendment rights to enact revenge, might have worked a few years prior, but today, feels tone deaf, dated and poorly-timed.
Read more‘The Mustang' Review: Familiar Story Somehow Works Due to Lead Performance and Direction
Rage-filled inmate meets rage-filled mustang — cue in the metaphors.
Read more‘Us' Review: Jordan Peele's Sophomore Effort Lacks Depth But Makes Up For It With Thrills [Review]
Writer-director-producer Jordan Peele carries the weight of expectation with his sophomore “Us.” After all, his debut, 2017’s “Get Out was an incredibly well-perceived genre mashup that dealt with the race division in America.
Read moreS. Craig Zahler's ‘Dragged Across Concrete' Is Avant-Garde Right-Wing Cinema [Review]
Bless writer-director S.Craig Zahler’s pulp heart for not conforming to what it supposed to be deemed acceptable in movies today. His first two movies “Bone Tomahwak” and “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” were non-conformist depictions of violence raised to the level of art. Casting conservative actors like Vince Vaughn, Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell in his films has irked people to no end; Zahler has been called every name in the book: A misogyniost, bigot, racist, sexist and, really, any terrible term deemed “alt-right” on Twitter. Sounds familiar? Quentin Tarantino had the same issues back in 1994 when his “Pulp Fiction” pushed the boundaries of distastefulness in cinema to create a landmark movie event. Zahler isn’t in the same league yet as QT, but his rebellious brand of avant-garde, right wing cinema is making a mark, whether people want to admit it or not.
Read more‘Ash is Purest White’ Is Jia Zhang-ke’s Beautiful Feminist Take On The Gangster Film [Review]
At first glance, Jia Zhang-ke‘s “Ash is Purest White” feels like an immaculately perfect patchwork film, taking cues from his 2013 masterwork “A Touch of Sin” and his flawed, but brilliant, 2015 epic “Mountains May Depart,” as well as the docu-drama Chinese glimpse of “Still Life.” It’s odd, considering that Zhang-ke is not known for repetition — in fact, the only repetitiveness we keep seeing is the use of his wife and muse Zhao Tao in his movies. The director is famous for continuously trying to re-examine and reinvent the language of cinema with every movie.
Read more“True Detective” Season 3 Was An Improvement Over Last Season, But Continued to Show Its Creator's Flaws As An Artist
The exposition in “True Detective” Season 3 almost broke the season apart for me. When you have an actor like Mahersala Ali, who can give off emotional resonance with just a facial stare, and you give him incredibly expanded dialogue, well, that’s creator Nic Pizzolatto’s ego for you.
Read moreJulianne Moore gives one of her best performances in “Gloria Bell" [Review]
Sebastian Lelio‘s "Gloria Bell" is a remake of the director's 2013 film "Gloria," except this time he moves the story from his native Chile to the U.S.
Read more“Triple Frontier" is A-Grade Action With More Brains Than Brawns [Review]
Former elite soldiers go on an Expendables-like heist thriller in J.C. Chandor’s (“All Is Lost,” “A Most Violent Year”) indelibly exciting and pulse-pounding “Triple Frontier.”
Read more“Captain Marvel” Struggles to Overcome Its Formulaic Trappings [Review]
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Captain Marvel” is very much designed for the Marvel “nerd.” A full-on cosmic orgy dabbled with nostalgia-driven details of the 1990s. This is a time-shifting space story teeming with deception at every turn, and, yet, when it reaches its finale one feels, quite frankly, un-involved by it, hell, even bored.
Read morePeter Jackson's Landmark “They Shall Not Grow Old" [Review]
Peter Jackson’s "They Shall Not Grow Old" uses never-before-seen archival footage of the "great war," which then colorizes and restores them in 3D format. This is an incredibly fascinating project which was originally screened in the U.K. last fall but has only come out this past month in the States. The result is nothing short of a landmark cinematic event.
Read more“Isn't it Romantic?" is the Very Thing it Mocks [Review]
Here’s a movie that mocks the very thing that it is. What starts off as a satirical bit on romcoms, shooting darts at the leading ladies of the genre from the ‘90s, ultimately turns into that very kind of movie. That’s “Isn’t It Romantic” a film which casts Rebel Wilson as its lead, but fails to capture the wooly spirit of the talented 39-year-old Aussie comedian.
Read more‘The Hole In The Ground’ Digs A Moody, But Conventional Horror Ditch [Review]
Not to carp on about it, but the new wave of indie arthouse horror, but has really tapped into something primal in our culture. Using formal rigor and a kind of patience that’s the opposite of jump scares, this new movement is bound by its collective desire to use atmospherics to unsettle us emotionally and psychological on a much deeper level. It’s a different kind of fear and one not traditionally scary in the boo! gotcha! sense, but in general, it’s so much more long-lasting and at its, best profoundly disturbing.
Read moreChristian Petzold’s ‘Transit' is Driven By Kafkaesque Ambiguity [Review]
Christian Petzold’s “Transit” is the completion of what the director has called his “Love in the Time of Oppressive Systems Trilogy” with “Barbara” and “Phoenix.”
Read more‘The Wedding Guest’: Dev Patel Stars In Michael Winterbottom’s Patchy Drama [Review]
Director Michael Winterbottom (“24 Hour Party People,” “A Mighty Heart“) has had a career filled with ups and downs. His knack for jumping into different genres and has always been commendable, but it makes for a rather patchy filmography. Nevertheless, the 56-year-old filmmaker never cashes it in, always pushing himself with something new and, at times, interesting. Even when he fails, he does so admirably. Sadly, his latest endeavor, “The Wedding Guest,” is a lesser effort despite its intentions.
Read moreGaspar Noe's “Climax": Vibrant Dance Movie and Horrific Bad-Trip [Review]
Gaspar Noe‘s Climax is split into two movies, both running about 45 minutes, both relying on risky, over-the-top camerawork and both heavily relying on an EDM soundtrack.
Read moreWWE-Produced “Fighting With My Family" Has a Smackdown of Cliches [Review]
Here is a shamelessly formulaic product brought to you by WWE studios and meant to benefit the wrestling company by promoting its brand while also telling the chase-your-dreams true story of its real-life superstar wrestler Paige. Cue in the familiar sports-movie clichés, because “Fighting With My Family” uses plenty of them.
The film’s been written and directed by Stephen Merchant (this guy really loves to use montages) and is almost, but not quite, saved by an adorably persistent performance courtesy of Florence Pugh (dynamite in “Lady Macbeth”) as Saraya-Jade Bevis aka Paige. Pugh plays it straight, with no over-the-top theatrics, but instead, a wide-eyed kid-like optimism which captures the look, sound and feel of a WWE female champion that is completely out of her league with the company’s brand of feminine “divas.”
Julia “Sweet Saraya” (Lena Headey) and Patrick “Rowdy Ricky Knight” (Nick Frost) play her parents, and her older brother, Zak “Zodiac” is played by Jack Lowden, but whenever the film turns towards their own London working-class plight, where they manage their own low-rent wrestling league, the film falters in keeping our attention. It’s the grueling boot camp of the farm league, which the WWE has invited Saraya-Jade to, that is the crux of Merchant’s Cinderella-story.
The fact that Merchenat decides to periodically check back in with Zak on the home front, killing time by training young wrestlers, does a disservice to the momentum being built by Pugh’s tale and feels like filler rather than a narrative necessity. There’s a two-scene cameo by The Rock, playing himself, and a decently-delivered payoff when Paige finally makes her big Raw debut, but the film is so overstuffed with clichés that the journey feels, in more ways than one, like an insufferable smackdown to our IQs. [C]
“Paddleton" Is a Slight But Loving Ode to Male Friendship [Review]
The fact that Alex Lehmann’s “Paddleton'‘ concerns two friends, one of which has just been told he’s dying of cancer, could make you run scared from the sob-fest that is about to happen, but “Paddleton” isn’t a “Love Story” or a “Terms of Endearment,” rather it’s a film that is incredibly light on its feet with humor and heartbreak and which sidesteps whatever cliches can be found in this kind of gooey territory. Despite some narrative straining, the payoff is beautifully rendered.
Read moreAsghar Farhadi's “Everybody Knows" is a Crushing Disappointment [Review]
Asghar Farhadi has built a career out of making masterful family dramas. With "About Elly," "A Separation," "The Past," and "The Salesman," the Iranian-born writer-director has put his name on the shortlist of world-class directors. I can count these rare and incisively talented filmmakers in less than two hands. So it pains me to be the bearer of bad news that the 46-year-old filmmaker's latest film, the Spanish-language drama "Everybody Knows," is not a bad movie, in fact it's half-decent, but that we've come to expect much more from him. Sometimes, expectations really do dictate how you feel about a film. This is the perfect example, as Farhadi's latest is a whodunit about a missing daughter and her mother, who painstakingly tries to put the clues together to find her.
Read more“High Flying Bird" is messy, slight and overstuffed with ideas but its ambitions are undeniably exciting [Review]
Ray Burke (Andre Holland) is a top-notch New York sports agent that seems to have hit the big time by getting the rights to represent a basketball phenom named Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg), only problem is that there’s a lockout and it’s preventing Scott and many other rookies from getting their first NBA paychecks, leaving them unsure of their future. Enter Burke, an ingenious on-the-spot groundbreaker, who decides to push the envelope a bit by trying to bring the players association and owners together with well-constructed set-ups and .. well just watch the movie.
Read more“Leaving Neverland" Feels More Like an Opportunistic Hit-Piece Rather Than a Documentary [Review]
I can “review” HBO’s upcoming “Leaving Neverland” or just give an opinionated schema of Michael Jackson and his history of sexual abuse allegations towards underaged teenage boys. I’ll try to do both.
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