Hollywood continues to pay reparations for Gone With the Wind with this elegiac adaptation of Solomon Northrup’s autobiographical saga of a free black man forced into bondage for a dozen years. They might just as well have named it The Passion of the Slave. Chiwetel Ejiofor suffers well under the …
Ridley Scott finishes what he started in Prometheus: the story of David (Michael Fassbender), a sentient creation who discovers that his creator is laughably inferior, but still potentially useful. (There’s a bang-up opening scene featuring David’s awakening — physical and otherwise — for those who may have thought they were …
The titular creed states that, unlike most people, Assassins know that nothing is true and everything is permitted. It’s hard to imagine true believers in such a creed turning around and saying that their own lives are worth nothing and all that matters is the protection of the Apple of …
Wall-of-the-Roman-Empire epic, set in the early 2nd Century A.D., the wall being the figurative one the Romans ran into among the Picts in Northern Britain and the literal one Hadrian built further to the south, the outer boundary. In essence Cavalry-and-Indians in skirts and breastplates, the narrative centers on seven …
Dustin Hoffman said it in Stranger than Fiction: if you’re in a tragedy, you die; if you’re in a comedy, you get married. Viewers will have to decide for themselves exactly what sort of story they are getting from director and co-writer Pawel Pawlikowski’s handsome, gorgeous, heartbreaking, heart-thumping romance. Handsome: …
"I've seen it all, counselor," intones worldly-wise dealmaker Brad Pitt. "It's all shit." This is very close to the point of The Counselor. Pretty shit, pricey shit, exciting shit, lovable shit, even enduring shit - but still shit. The counterargument, to the extent that one is offered, is so brief …
Freud may be out of fashion, but he shouldn’t be boring. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fassbender) and their patient who became a brainy disciple and colleague, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), trade analytic ideas and furtive, sado-masochistic feelings. Knightley bravely uses her beauty, even jutting out her jaw a …
Frank (Michael Fassbender), the visionary lead singer in an unsung alt-rock band, spends his entire life hiding beneath piñata headgear that brings to mind a Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru. His parents later confess their adult son suffers from mental illness. Really? Forrest Gump for hipsters, this huggable, Sundance-sanctioned babble joins the ever-stretching …
Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt to subvert popular genre expectations results in an adequate 007 action/adventure picture. Mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano has the tough, tight look and smoldering dispassion the genre demands, but not even Meryl Streep could add depth to this. It’s easier to swallow than the average …
The latest Jane Eyre movie is not an advance — despite fine settings, a haughty, soul-scarred Rochester portrayed by Michael Fassbender, and ace supporting figures (Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins). The story is scrambled by tricky time jumps and clumsily handled by director Cary Fukunaga. The main deficit is …
After a tour of killing Jerrys in the Great War, bachelor Tom (Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender) returns to Australia, where he plans on settling down as a lighthouse keeper. Isabel (Oscar winner Alicia Vikander) is the town looker, making her, in accordance with Hollywood’s rule of keeping up surface appearances, …
The story of the American Samoa soccer team, infamous for their brutal 31-0 FIFA loss in 2001. With the World Cup Qualifiers approaching, the team hires down-on-his-luck, maverick coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) hoping he will turn the world’s worst soccer team around in this heartfelt underdog comedy. Directed by …
A long-planned, crushingly filmed prequel to Alien, with director Ridley Scott again insulting his high achievement in Blade Runner. Many borrowed themes get rummaged together with absurd effects, dismal violence, and self-administered surgery by a scientist (Noomi Rapace) that seems both for and against abortion (in this ugly, loopy vision, …
Less a film than an attractively illustrated chronicle of sexual pathology. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) needs sex and lots of it — with whores, with pickups, with his hand. Pretty much anything, really, as long as the encounter is impersonal. The pathology does not tolerate humanity. But humanity arrives in the …