Honest-to-gosh Western, a rare sight in the 21st Century, thick as fleas fifty years earlier, when the original 3:10 arrived. The remake is done in the decadent style of shades-of-brown realism, luxuriantly whiskered and shaggy-haired, yet preening and grandiose, with amplified passions, topographical sprawl, and an overblown (and significantly altered) …
A heaping helping of period pleasure from director David O. Russell. Irving Rosenfeld (a gutty Christian Bale, resplendent in combover and ascot) is a '70s Jay Gatsby without the class anxiety, a man comfortable with the notion that everybody is, like him, working the con — getting along by lying …
Knocking-kneed adaptation of the "controversial" novel by Bret Easton Ellis. Director and co-scriptwriter Mary Harron, keeping the story in the Reagan era (mobile phones as big as shoes), or in other words keeping it daintily at arm's length, wants to be double-sure that you know it's a satire -- as …
Director David O. Russell returns from an extended absence (after the oddflop Joy) with an extended...well, it’s hard to say what, exactly. A spoof on the hard-boiled works of Humphrey Bogart? That would explain the Maltese Falcon voiceover, the Big Sleep meetup with the rich family trying to control its …
Set in the 1930s, Amsterdam follows three friends who witness a murder, become suspects themselves, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history. Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, and John David Washington.
Set in the 1930s, Amsterdam follows three friends who witness a murder, become suspects themselves, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history. Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, and John David Washington.
With a new director (Christopher Nolan) and a new star (Christian Bale), the fifth entry in the Batman series, true to its title, returns to square one: how and why Bruce Wayne came to be Batman; the psychological root of his fixation on flying mammals; the part this played in …
The term “I don’t understand” is spoken numerous times throughout the film. That’s not counting audience members. Come equipped with a sophisticated understanding of the banking collapse of the mid-2000s and you’ll be hanging on every word. For those who invest in cinema and wouldn’t know a housing bubble from …
Scenic World War II romance between a Greek island beauty (the Spanish Penelope Cruz, with her unaltered native accent) and a music-loving Italian officer (Nicolas Cage, with an unsteady Italian one). Shades, or shimmers rather, of Mediterraneo -- though it ultimately turns much darker. Slow, somewhat soggy, but rewarding in …
Fashionably “dark” comic-book movie, the first one to think of putting the darkness right up in the title — a synonym, that, for “the bat man,” as he is frequently and unfamiliarly referred to, or simply Batman to you and me. Aside from the title, the second installment in Christopher …
Well, at least they got the biblical proportions right: the massive Egyptian monument industry, the vast peoples and vaster landscapes, and most importantly, the God-sized plagues and waves. Otherwise, Ridley Scott's take on the great contest between Moses and Pharoah is underwhelming and ill-conceived. First, the underwhelming: nearly everyone — …
Not so much a movie about boxing as a movie about fighting, about the act of conflict. Mark Wahlberg plays Micky Ward, the real-life road worker from Lowell, Massachusetts, who recharged his sputtering boxing career to win the WBU Light Welterweight Championship in 2000. Amy Adams stars as his supportive …
Lest you have any doubt about why they call it the Rape of Nanking, here is the story of one American man’s attempt to save a group of Chinese schoolgirls from rape at the hands of Japanese invaders in the late ’30s. Subtle, it’s not; but then, war isn’t subtle. …
Come for the metal, stay for the mettle. Because as only-American-to-win-LeMans Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) tells you at the outset, once you get your snarling, straining beast of a race car up over 7000 rpms, you go to the Race Place, where everything fades away and you’re left with the …
Matt Damon and Christian Bale star as car designer and driver in James Mangold's high octane (we hope) biopic.