It didn’t have to end this way — in such thoroughly standard smash ‘em up fashion, with minor heroes dutifully duking it out with faceless hordes for punchy-power bolt minute after punchy-power-bolt minute until the mayhem quotient has been met and the principals can finally square off for their climactic …
Sophia (a steel-sharp Catherine Walker) wants to get in touch with her guardian angel — mostly because she failed to be one for her son — so she contacts a gnostic with the last name of Solomon (Steve Oram) to see what it will take in the way of expense, …
A Portrait of the Artist as a Very Old Man. There has always been a healthy dollop of death surrounding Swiss artist H.R. Giger, whose great (and worthy) claim to fame is the biomechanical design work he did for Ridley Scott's Alien. And mortality is very much in attendance during …
Why would you go to see a movie about a museum exhibition about a musician? Well, maybe because the exhibition, currently touring the world, isn't stopping in your town. Also maybe because the musician in question wanted very much for his music "to look like it sounds." David Bowie understood …
The scary (and gory) things on screen may be zombies, but the real monster here is the troll in the director’s chair. Jim Jarmusch and friends (Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, et alia) have a laugh at the audience’s expense with a film that starts off sounding good, looking …
An anti-superhero movie (or maybe a super-antihero movie) that might have worked if it had the courage of its lack of convictions. That is to say, it starts out, story-wise, with a messed up mercenary named Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), except he mostly just jokes about being messed up, and …
Director David Leitch and star Ryan Reynolds know why you’re here: to hear the merc with a mouth revel in smug-smart impieties (about other characters, about superhero movies, about narrative in general, ad infinitum but not quite ad nauseam) and to watch him kick ass despite enduring mind-blowing (bone-breaking, flesh-rending, …
Director David Leitch and star Ryan Reynolds know why you’re here: to hear the merc with a mouth revel in smug-smart impieties (about other characters, about superhero movies, about narrative in general, ad infinitum but not quite ad nauseam) and to watch him kick ass despite enduring mind-blowing (bone-breaking, flesh-rending, …
Superhero movie fans of a certain age may recall a moment at the end of Avengers: Infinity War when big baddie Thanos snapped his gauntleted fingers and so ended half of the universe’s living things — including folks like Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange. For one brief darkling moment, …
In writer-director Jason Lei Howden, Peter Jackson may have found a cinematic heir — at least to his patrimony of New Zealand–based, late-’80s gross-out horror-comedy. Sad metalhead Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) loves bands like Cannibal Corpse because “when life sucks and you feel alone and empty, you feel better because someone …
Brutal dictators and their conspiratorial would-be successors — they’re just like us! Read: grasping, vain, selfish, petty, blind to their own weakness and stupidity, and only too willing to let others suffer as long as they prosper and advance. Director and co-writer Armando Iannucci puts it all on black (comedy), …
Audrey Tautou brings her curious, wide-eyed beauty to a gentle portrait of grief after loss. We’re given plenty of time to loll in the perfect bliss of her romance with a handsome hunk before he dies, the better to grasp the numb paralysis that follows. The restoration that follows that …
Scott Derrickson's latest foray into "based on a true story" exorcism-land — he broke through with 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose — benefits from some creative setup (the demon arrives from the Middle East via Iraq vets who stumble upon an underground altar), some clever genre mashup (the film …
Gerard Butler may have found the perfect late-middle age role in director and co-writer Christian Gudegast’s quasi-stylish, both-sides-of-the-law crime drama. He tears into his performance as nasty cop (well, sheriff) and lousy husband Nick Flanagan the way Flanagan tears into a crime-scene donut, and crams the screen with a combination …
Perhaps the oddest duck in the flock that included Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese — i.e., the lucky ducks who got to express very personal visions with studio-level backing back in the ‘70s — sits down and looks back on his career as a director, …