Category: movies
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“Happy As Lazzaro”: A Magical Realist Fairy Tale Lost In a Neorealist Folk Story
Critics love Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy As Lazzaro because it’s a magic realist tale enshrouded in neo-realist garb, a wolf in sheep’s clothing of symbolism and allegory. I have no patience for movies or symbols that refuse to define themselves or get lost in intelligent constructs without an emotional base. I am a film fan first…
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“The Front Runner” Suffers the Side Effects of Gary Hart’s Monkey Business
In The Front Runner Hugh Jackman portraying the scandal ridden Presidential candidate Gary Hart passes two boats named Side Effect and Monkey Business. It’s an obvious statement of theme. The Front Runner shows the side effects of Gary Hart’s monkey business with Donna Rice. Director Jason Reitman portrays Gary Hart as an old school pol…
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“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”: The Coen Brothers Revisit and Enhance the Western
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (on Netflix) is a sextette of Coen brothers Western vignettes that is a great representation of both their weird and serious side. The near assimilation of other Western directors styles is fused into something that is truly uniquely Coen, profoundly Western and still encansuplated great film making. Each tale can…
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“Ideal Home”: Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd Do a Family Three Way
In Ideal Home the comic rifts that Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd are able to create on their gay characters and their relationship is probably what attracted them to the project. Their bickering has a zing and wit that feels loose and unscripted. It lifts what is a conventional adoption drama about a gay couple…
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“Private Life”: A Great IVF Dramedy
Private Life, (on Netflix) director Tamara Jenkins first film in twelve years, is an angst filled dramedy about trying to conceive. The grind of unsuccessful IVF treatments, futile search for egg donors and deflective comments to adoption counselors feels lived in, comically and realistically absurd, simultaneously heartfelt and heartbreaking, and always authentic. The irony of…
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“Dumplin’”: A Beauty Pageant Comedy With a Dolly Parton Heart and Song Track
Dumplin’ (a Netflix movie) folds a whole lot of Dolly Parton songs (six new, and six classic) and witticisms into its rebellious BBW daughter (Danielle Macdonald from Patti Cake$) versus former beauty pageant queen mom (Jennifer Aniston) plot. It is the most Dolly ever put into a movie without a Parton appearance. She is guru,…
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“Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” Getting Beyond the Disney Version to a True Kipling Sense
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (on Netflix) realism and violence makes it a truer version of the Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book stories than the sanitized Disney versions. Though not quite Darwinian, The Law of the Jungle does rule here and is verbalized quite frequently by the wolf pups and Baloo the Bear (voiced with…
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“Widows”: A Heist Film With a Large Detour Thru Character Hell
In Widows the best heist occurs at the beginning of the film and it is fast, smoothly edited, filled with stunning action shots and crashes that flow by seamlessly in one take— and almost every criminal dies. The important one, carried out by the Widows of the first, is brief, choppily edited, has no chase…
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“Green Book” Is More Than a Reverse Driving Miss Daisy
Green Book, a semi-true story about a black concert pianist being chauffeured around the early 1960’s deep South by a white Italian racist New Yorker with the deepest of accents, tries to be a reverse Driving Miss Daisy with Viggo Mortensen assuming the Morgan Freeman role and Mahershala Ali assuming the Jessica Tandy Miss Daisy…
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“Ralph Breaks the Internet” Gets Stuck in the Disney Princess World Wide Web
There is one thing that Ralph Breaks the Internet does very well— satirizing the Disney world wide web, and Princess culture in particular. The regular internet not so well. The Disney Princesses show up to semi-anoint Vanellope into the harem. It may look like a dressing room, but it is filled with Princesses waiting for…
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“Outlaw King” Mucks Its Way Thru Scottish History
For those expecting Outlaw King (on Netflix) to be a sequel to Braveheart will be sorely disappointed. The only appearance of William Wallace in David Mackenzie’s telling of Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine), is his quartered (judging by the outward curve) left hand nailed to a Scottish cross in a public square- and that is…
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“Instant Family” Manages to Get It Right, Eventually
In the adoption comedy Instant Family Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne agree to foster and adopt three minority children (Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, Juliana Gamiz) who are caught in the intricacies and sometimes unfairness of the juvenile justice system. There is the usual speechifying, rough edges smoothed, easily resolved traumas and complication, but at its…
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“The Christmas Chronicles” Kurt Russell’s Santa Doesn’t Ho-Ho-Ho But He Is Definitely Holly Jolly
Kurt Russell can make you believe he is Santa Claus, although be it one that doesn’t ho-ho-ho, who is not happy with the fatter oft advertised fatter version, and can belt out an Elvis style rendition of any holiday song. Russell’s Santa in The Christmas Chronicles (a Netflix movie) exists between Billy Bob Thornton bad…
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“The Miseducation of Cameron Post”: Getting to an Awkward Normal
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, although foregrounded in gay conversion therapy, at its heart is a routine teen drama about not fitting in. The problem isn’t Cameron (Chloe Grace Moretz), it is the adults and parents. Cameron Post feels like a summer camp drama and is just as consequential. The adults are a joke, and…
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“Boy Erased”: Loving and Hating Via Misunderstanding
In Boy Erased, a gay conversion drama directed by Joel Edgerton, there is a lot of parental love mixed in with misunderstanding. To their credit the parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) of Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) don’t react by shunning but love that seeks wise counsel in men whose misguided faith and narrow view…
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“Creed II”: A Competent Sequel That Overcomes Its Apollo Creed Trauma
Creed II tries to give the father and son villains Ivan (who killed Adonis’ father Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies) and Viktor Drago (Dolph Lundgren and Florian Munteanu) some depth before they are knocked out by big bout boxing cliches. Lundgren and Munteanu, being actors of limited range, are forced to share four emotions…
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“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”: Confusion, Exhaustion and a White Eye Johnny Depp
In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald J.K. Rowling’s propensity for plot development through regression hampers a sequel already suffering from planned quintet fatigue. No advancement can be made without two reinterpretations and flashbacks. Crimes is so tangled with story that not even the best hair relaxer can straighten the mess without abundant audience confusion…
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“Overlord” Elevating the Gruesomely Preposterous
Overlord, is not despite what its trailer shows, a war movie with horror elements, but a horror movie through and through. Despite being set on D-Day, and having realistic combat sequence, Overlord also has reanimated corpses, sadistic torture scenes, and unholy science experiments. The mission, which is paramount in all war movies, is an afterthought…
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“What They Had” Gets to the Heart of the Family Bond in Crisis
There is a lot of emotional resonance, biting interplay and resentment tempered with the uneasy respect for each other that siblings and parents have make in order to maintain the family bond in Elizabeth Chomko’s first directorial effort What They Had. These are the kind of breathed in characters good actors live to flesh out.…
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“The Girl in the Spider’s Web”: Claire Foy Gets Caught In Atomic Intrigue and Sibling Rivalry
Stieg Larson’s black clad, Goth, bisexual, iconoclast with considerable hacking skills, Lisbeth Salander character doesn’t blend easily with the derring-do exploits of a James Bond persona, but that is what Salander, played this time around by Royal portrayer Claire Foy, is forced to do in the semi-reboot The Girl In the Spider’s Web. Technically Salander…
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“The Grinch” Isn’t Such a Mean One After All
In Dr.Seuss’ The Grinch what makes the Grinch redeemable and savable isn’t his two size small heart which is capable of growing bigger, or his sunny mean disposition and pranks punctuated with moments of tenderness and compassion. No, it’s his dog and reindeer. Even though they willingly do all that he asks, the Grinch himself…
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“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”: The Perfect Non-Romantic Twosome Create Their Greatest Con
In Can You Ever Forgive Me? Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant create the perfect criminal twosome. She creates literary forgeries and he inspires her and peddles them when the feds get wise to her. When the gaze is on them Can You Ever Forgive Me? shines with their repartee and their earthy friendship that…
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“Bohemian Rhapsody”Bringing on the Myth of Mercury and Queen
Queen was a good rock band made great by its frontman, Freddie Mercury. Bohemian Rhapsody is a good rock film made great by the performance of Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. Malik is the plus one that makes Bohemian Rhapsody soar, rises it above its standard rock bio pic origins, and even its egregious Mercury…
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“Beautiful Boy”: A Soft Focus Addiction Drama
Beautiful Boy, a harrowing film about drug addiction and its effect on a father and son relationship, struggles to reconcile its two origin sources. David Sheff’s title memoir tells the father’s side, while Nic Sheff’s Tweak relays the son’s addiction story. David’s (Steve Carell) point of view is the dominant perspective acting as a filter…
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“The Other Side of the Wind”: Orson Welles Own Serious Parody of Himself and Cinema
Orson Welles last film The Other Side of the Wind (on Netflix) reconstituted from footage and assembled by a master team of film editors, directors and Welles scholars, establishes some lofty goals, mainly how to have both a serious film enshrouded in the shell of an intentionally bad one. Wind uses different film styles (black…
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“The Happy Prince”: Skips The Happy and Goes for the Gloom of Wilde
The Happy Prince is a fairy story about Oscar Wilde (Rupert Everett) in the last sad years of his life. Rupert Everett, both actor and director here, knows Oscar bait when he sees it, and the story of an exiled homosexual writer, bankrupt financially, emotionally and creatively, in the last miserable throws of succumbing to…
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“Nobody’s Fool”: Tiffany Haddish Rescues Tyler Perry From His Ordinary Foolishness
Tiffany Haddish in a NY Times interview has described her career as a “…delicious roasted chicken.” Chicken tastes better when it is free range and the same can be said of Haddish’s comic style. In Nobody’s Fool, a picture written for her by Tyler Perry, Haddish gets to free range, improvise, peck and chew on…
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“Suspiria”: A Kinky Coven of a Film That Means Itself to Death.
The Luca Guadagnino remake of Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria shoehorns the holy trinity of horror: witches, the Holocaust and terrorism. Meaning so facades and reflects meaning that it becomes un-meaning, which in turn leads to malaise and boredom when a six act structure plus epilogue stretches three acts beyond audience patience and a padded two…
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“Johnny English Strikes Again” Getting Past Bond to 00 Ought Nott
Johnny English is funnier than it has any right to because Atkinson is seriously stupid yet classy in the best possible way.
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“Free Solo”: Killing Fear Climbing a Granite Slate
Free Solo frustrates us with excess observation and preparation but when it climbs, it soars.
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“Mid 90’s” Never Gets a Chance to Skate Beyond the Recreation
Suljic performance is the only one in the cast that doesn’t feel forced, over earnest and effected— the only one that exists and rises above standard character types. It is an odd creative misstep from actor turned director Jonah Hill.
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“Hunter Killer”: A Sub Thriller That Gets Only Half Way There
Gerard the Butler fulfills his stoic but wise commander role with enough facial twitches and subtle eye rolls to establish his superior wisdom and tactical battle smarts.
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“The Old Man and the Gun”: Robert Redford Gets His Perfect Goodbye
The Old Man and the Gun even has a non-ironic Oscar in memoriam montage composited out of every remotely applicable Redford Western and prison movie.
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“My Dinner With Herve: Going Beyond— The Plane! The Plane!
Andy Garcia’s off kilter performance and accent as Ricardo Montalban is just so balanced between good and awful that it makes palpable Villechaize’s detest and hatred of him.
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“The Hate U Give”: Getting Beyond Black Lives Matter
The world needs both a Jesus and a Starr to save it, to break the cycle where the racist cop can find enough humanity in front of him to make the hard choice not to shoot.
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“The Sisters Brothers”: Anti-Family on the High Plains
With the gang together the movie wanders into amiable chat and a ton of metaphoric inaction, focusing on rumination over ruination to the film’s detriment.
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“Halloween”: Too Many Whacks Don’t Revive This Corpse
The killings are pale imitations caught in the stale characterizations and tropes initiated forty years before.
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“Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween”: It’s Hard to Get Past the Dummy
All the usual creature from the first Bumps appear minus the evil animus. Still, this is one evil book that shouldn’t have been open.
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“Apostle”: Getting to the Gore Via Perverted Paradise
Apostle makes you accept or reject its essential contradictions. Accepting it will lead one to discovering one of the better horror films of the year, while rejecting it will make one think it is a mess.
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“Monsters and Men”: Black Witness and the Call to Action
Monsters and Men feels energized, needed and only slightly forced. It is a statement film that in these divisive times can never be overstated or repeated enough.
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“The Kindergarten Teacher”: Coddling Greatness to the Edge of Transgressiont
The Kindergarten Teacher is a statement on why parents should always listen for the greatness in their children.
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“Colette”: A Proper English Film About a Transgressive French Writer
Colette needs a good spanking and a nice Café au lait not a proper cup of tea and some polite clothed sex.
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“Bad Times At the El Royale” Is a Chamber Noir Above Your Average Tarantino
El Royale is the best acted and stylish movie of the year.
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“First Man” Is Intimate Lunacy
Ryan Gosling perfectly captures Armstrong’s inner space, his intimate lunacy, the sense that the process, that space itself is the only thing that understands him, that talks to him and is his most adoring friend.
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“22 July”: Finding the Way Forward After the Horror
Greengrass approach is documentary like, emphasizing balance at the expense of inner examination. It comes woefully close to over emphasizing Breivik’s viewpoint, until the last 30 minutes puts him in his place.
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“Hold the Dark”: Pursuing the Motiveless Malignancy
Hold the Dark is a difficult film to understand and watch because it attempts to explain what the rational mind can only see and understand as evil and motiveless.
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“A Star Is Born”: Bradley Cooper Knows Where His Oscar Star Resides
Cooper has smartly bet that he can direct himself and Gaga to an Oscar rather than act his way to one.
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“Little Women”: A Soul Crushing LoL Romantic Comedy Tragedy About a Woman Finding Her Man But Losing Her Independence
The 2018 setting only makes its more confusing and ironically more old fashion. Without a modern point of view all the updates of setting land with a thud when the plot beats keep their 19th century stylings.
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“Smallfoot” Is a Yeti Tale of a Sweetly Human Kind
For the Trump obsessed, there is a sub theme of treating obvious lies, even those written in stone, with obvious caution and questioning. That surely will draw some ire from the fake news believers.
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“Assasination Nation” Is a More Annoying Purge
Assasination Nation is directed within an inch of its life. It never gives you a chance to breath or think for yourself. Half of it is brilliant and the other half is overwrought.
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“Next Gen”: Wants Good Family Memories
Next Gen wants to be a kids movie that is deep enough to talk about with their kids.
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“The Land of Steady Habits”: Ben Mendelsohn Is a Sad Man Unable to Change His World
Holofcener has made a flawed film about a flawed and sad man unable to find his stature.
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“Nappily Ever After”: Sanaa Lathan’s Search for Her Perfect Natural Self
Nappily Ever After comes off soft because the obstacles are easy. That can happen when there is too smart and complex for the world she lives in.
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“The House With a Clock In Its Walls” Is Not an Overly Scary Kids Classic
Clock is light on the psychology and heavy on the magic and mythology. Clock is a pre-teen film that only wants to lightly scare and not traumatize.
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“White Boy Rick”: Too Low to Be Scarface and Not Smart Enough to Be a Goodfella
Merritt, Mathew McConaughey and the rest of the cast deliver believable performances. White Boy Rick just never elevates itself beyond its own squalid dreams.
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“A Simple Favor” Is a HItchcock Parody Gone Girl Slightly Awry
Feig delivers some darkly funny stuff but not enough serious mystery. There is no Hitchcock bounce, just Feig wasting his voice on something that doesn’t suit his style.
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“Life Itself” Is For the Living
Director Dan Fogelman (the show runner for the similarly themed television series This Is Us) knows that much of Life Itself will lend itself to complaints of manipulation to those critics who seek meaning in film but refuse to see it outside the celluloid dark. He doesn’t care.
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“The Wife”: Glen Close Settles for a Nobel Instead of an Oscar
The Wife is Glenn Close’s movie, her defining moment. By showing her character as a gracious loser and spouse she comes out the winner.
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“Juliet, Naked” Is a Good Tune in a Minor Key From the Nick Hornby Songbook
Juliet, Naked is a good tune to listen to for the late September cinema blues.
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“The Predator” Has Too Much Synthesis and Not Enough Hybrid
The Predator is succumbing to the thing that killed the Alien franchise too many aliens that forget that they are suppose to be the horror.
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“Peppermint’s” Alias Isn’t Elektra-fying Enough
Peppermint was probably about as much fun for Garner to do as it was for her to drive Ben Affleck to rehab.
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“Kin” Is Thicker Than Blood and Mediocre Sci-fi
Kin plays like a failed Quentin Tarantino movie redirected by Robert Rodriguez with a bad script rewrite from James Cameron. It is violent when it needs to be soft and inane when it explains.
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“Black Panther” Is Wakanda-ful
The Black Community has been waiting a long time for something as fully representative as Black Panther. So has the MCU.
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“Ghost Stories” Delivers Ye Ole British Scares
Ghost Stories is a delightful anthology for those purists who like their horror Hammer and slow building.
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“Support the Girls” Is a Low Key Joy
Support the Girls is slow key movie that is shaggy and dramatic as it needs to be.
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“Searching” Is a Good Find
Searching is as smart as a summer thriller can get.
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“Puzzle” Fits Together Well Enough
Puzzle is better at the making then it is at the completion. It takes pride in that accomplishment.
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“Operation Finale”: Offers Up Small Shocking Surprises
Operation Finale doesn’t offer up grand revelations just small shocking ones.
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“Book Club” Is as Steamy and Funny as Geritol
Book Club is a mess because it has the woman wanting Viagra in their lives and getting only Geritol.
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“The After Party” Is at Its Best In Between the Parties
At its heart, The After Party is a clever hybrid of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Hal Ashly’s the last detail, two films about finding identity and true friendship in the distractions of life.
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“A-X-L”: Good Robot Dog That Needs a Better Coder
A-X-L is a bad dog stuck in a good dog film. It would have been better to make it the AIBO movie.
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“2001: A Space Odyssey”: Five Insights on Why It Is Still the Greatest Sci-fi Film Ever
The monolith is everywhere and in everything.
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“The Happy Time Murders” Shoots Itself in Its Muppet Felt
The Happy Time Murders wants to be as profanely funny as Team America: World Police. It just doesn’t have the nerve or the heart.
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“Crazy Rich Asians” Is Asian Enough for the Rest of Us
Crazy Rich Asians should play well everywhere for those content for it to be just Asian and not bothered by the fact the fact that those that know it well (in Singapore where it has been criticized for not be truly representative of the country’s real class distinctions) won’t see it as Asian enough.
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“Deadpool 2” Is Meta Better Than the Original
There is no point describing the plot of Deadpool 2 because the jokes and insane action sequences are the only reason for its existence.
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“Flavors of Youth” Explores the Essentials of Identity
Flavors of Youth points out how memory is essential to all identity. How it is the source of all art and creativity.
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“To All The Boys I Loved Before” Is Another 16 Candles
To All the Boys I Loved Before (based on the semi autobiographical novel by Jenny Han) creates lead characters with unusual depth for the genre.
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“Alpha” The First Boy and His Wolf Story
There are some homages to 2001’s Dawn of Man prologue (monolith like stone markers are an obvious offender) particularly in the Music of the Spheres echoes on the score, but it sticks rather closely to the Clan of the Cave Bear model established by Michael Chapman.
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“Mile 22” Loses Its Way at Mile 21
Director Peter Berg, working with Wahlberg for the fourth time, keeps everything humorlessly direct and savagely bloody.
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“Zama”: A Long Hard Slough About Colonial Waiting
Zama is about waiting— not the Waiting for Godot or Guffman kind— but the Colonial kind, which is historical, eloquently long and wonderfully filmed, cryptically acted and so broadly elliptical that it could mean anything while seemingly meaning everything. The kind that is either literary fraud or masterwork.
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“Summer 1993”: An Authentic Sketchbook of Childhood Grief
Summer 1993 feels lived in, breathed, authentic but never nostalgic. There is not a lot of drama but plenty of life on display.
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“Dog Days”: Dogged Humans and Adoptable Canines Go Through Their Romantic Comedy Tricks
Dog Days is a group romantic comedy that is content to let their humans be nice, kind hearted and loyal and their dogs to be good boys and girls.
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“Night Comes On” Is Like a Tide Before a Big Wave
Night Comes On is a quiet film with a lot of emotional power. It is like the tide before a big wave crests.
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“The Package” Surprisingly Isn’t a Dick
The Package knows that all teen comedies are about overcoming and being comfortable with the dick.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Can Even Overcome Being Stranded In Netflix Mediocrity
Guernsey is the perfect choice for those seeking a Netflix and chill night that is gentle, gentile and very British.
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“BlacKkKlansman” Is Spike Lee’s Plea for an American Middle
Lee the ultimate black insider has made a film that is faithful to the outsiders. It doesn’t preach revolution, just seeking a sensible middle ground.
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“The Meg” Has the Jaws to Take on Statham
The Meg is no Jaws but it has enough bite to make it a nice way to spend 115 minutes.
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“Summer of 84” Goes Beyond Stranger Things
Summer of 84 earnestness will engage the 80’s fanboy. Its twist will shock them.
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“Madeline’s Madeline” Isn’t Quite WTF Enough
The titular heroine, who may or may not be going mad, is played by newcomer Helena Howard. Don’t take her disaffected scowl for serious acting. Three quarters of runway models can produce and sustain the same look.
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“A Prayer Before Dawn” Is Pure Testosterone and Rage
A Prayer Before Dawn is a pure example of testosterone and rage filmmaking. It leaves you beaten down and shattered.
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“Christopher Robin” Is a Wonderful Thing
This is constant happy tears time for all those who were weened on the Disney animated series.
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“Revenge”: A #metoo Empowerment Tale
Revenge is a hallucinogenic yellow neon female empowerment tale perfect for the #metoo era.
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“The Rider”: The First Great Western of Our Time
The Rider is a heartbreaking portrayal of those who can and cannot give up, of those living broken lives with broken dreams and broken hopes.
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“The Spy Who Dumped Me” Is Kate McKinnon’s World
The Spy Who Dumped Me only works when its smart enough to make it McKinnon’s World.
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“Brij Mohan Amar Rahe” Is Too Squalid for Bollywood
Brij Mohan tries to give its audience something more substantial than the usual light Bollywood fare. It ends up to squalid for that audience to watch.
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“Like Father” Is A Grand Enough Voyage
Kelsey Grammer and Kristen Bell as the workaholic father and daughter who missed out on the joys of family, keep it believable and poignant by delivering constant nuance performances.
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“Eighth Grade” Gets It Hughe-ly Right
Bo Burnham, in his first feature effort, has written and directed the perfect John Hughes movie intended for parents.
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“Three Identical Strangers”: Alike But Never Fully There
The triplets are natural story tellers and actors and the sad reveal of their post eighties fame unravels with regrets, poignancy, pathos and an overpowering sense of their losses and their tragedy.
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“Avengers: Infinity War”: The Perfect Solution for Marvel Superhero Fatigue
Thanos snapping his finger and disposing of half the MCU is the best thing that could happen to those not wanting to sit through another third or fourth iteration of critically lauded and wildly fan applauded Marvel mythology.
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“The Bleeding Edge”: Shows How the Medical Device Industry Is Bleeding Us Out
The Bleeding Edge is a cry for caution for patients not to accept the latest and greatest unless it has been thoroughly tried and true.