Ole Bornedal's American re-do of his own Danish thriller about a necrophiliac serial killer and the hapless morgue attendant who falls under suspicion. In this, Bornedal is following the route of the Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer and The Vanishing, except that as the Bornedal original went uncirculated in America, the …
The Coen brothers' first literary adaptation, from a Cormac McCarthy original, an overflowingly bloody pulp thriller, plumped up with folksy first-person social commentary in italics, about a Texas good ole boy who stumbles upon the internecine scene of a drug deal gone bad, makes off with a satchel of cash, …
Spike Lee's remake of Chan-wook Park's celebrated tale of a man who is mysteriously imprisoned and then just as mysteriously released has plenty of spattered brain matter and sadistic gut-punches. What it lacks is the original's creepy heart. The villain of this piece needs to be Lecter-level compelling: rarely seen, …
When they’re not pissing out forest fires, a group of misogynistic oafs sit around listening to heavy metal while debating the intellectual capacity of the bar tramps who agree to sleep with them. The only one who seems to be genuinely happily married is retired firefighter Jeff Bridges. Bridges gets …
Usually, director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) knows how to stick the landing. Any nagging dissatisfactions are dispatched with elegance and aplomb by his directorial denoument. Not so, Sicario, his exploration of the brutal violence and moral complication surrounding the war on drugs. Critics looking to get a pull-quote on the poster …
As if in imitation of the ruthless Mexican drug cartel its heroes go after, director Stefano Sollima’s sequel decapitates, disembowels, and castrates Denis Villeneuve’s beautiful, tough, and sad 2015 original. Head: what had been a smart take on the difficulty of doing right even when you’re righteous — particularly when …
Pronounced “dubya.” Oliver Stone’s diplomatic biopic on our forty-third President (Josh Brolin, a dead-on impression, but where to go with it?) is so careful to avoid bias as to avoid purpose. It barely matches the caliber of a TV docudrama, much less the compensating snickers. In that department, Thandie Newton …
Twenty-three years after he first visited the scene, Stone weighs in (thud!) on recent developments in the stock market, another chapter in his career of heavy breathing over epochal events. Gordon Gekko, his most memorable fictional creation (not to compete with Nixon, W., or Alexander the Great), out of prison …
Woody Allen back in England, plugging away in the manner of his endless autumn: unpretentious, unpressured, unpolished, just a kernel of an idea, thin on jokes and one-liners, fortunate still to find funding, free to do and to be. With little deliberation, he choreographs a dance of discontent and delusion …