Writer-director Brad Bird picks up right where he left off 14 years ago in terms of both narrative and theme. Narrative: the arrival of The Underminer to ruin the peace and happiness of the Parrs, a family of superheroes that has finally gained those things after years of unhealthy repression. …
Writer-director Brad Bird picks up right where he left off 14 years ago in terms of both narrative and theme. Narrative: the arrival of The Underminer to ruin the peace and happiness of the Parrs, a family of superheroes that has finally gained those things after years of unhealthy repression. …
Writer-director Brad Bird picks up right where he left off 14 years ago in terms of both narrative and theme. Narrative: the arrival of The Underminer to ruin the peace and happiness of the Parrs, a family of superheroes that has finally gained those things after years of unhealthy repression. …
Gutsy call to open with the sound of a ticking clock. Because by this point, honey, maybe it is the years. While there are a bunch of things that make this final (pleasepleaseplease) installment of the Indiana Jones series not so much maddening as disappointing, the film's biggest sin is …
Longtime screenwriter and producer James Schamus adapts longtime novelist Philip Roth’s novel of love and death and Midwestern collegiate life, and turns what might have been an exercise in mordant mid-century nostalgia into something vital and resonant (as opposed to the trendier, emptier “relevant”). Something that lives and breathes and …
A thoroughly pedestrian adventure that might have been better titled Hell is Lots and Lots of Other People.. At least, that's the belief of the billionaire bad guy in Ron Howard's latest adaptation of Dan Brown's series featuring symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks). What to do about overbreeding humanity? Well, …
Overboiled based-on-a-true-story cops-and-druglords pic that aspires to portray the strain that acting bad has on good people, and to convey the tension that arises from pretending to form friendships with folks you’re trying to bust. One or two scenes do elicit a wince — co-star John Leguizamo makes the most …
The biggest problem here is right there in the title, taken from a little girl's cutesy term for her bipolar father's condition: it pretties up the nightmare. Writer-director Maya Forbes wants you to feel like you're being shown the difficult truth of a family wracked by mental illness. But the …
Matt Spicer directs and co-writes an internet-based version of The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Aubrey Plaza as the desperate outsider looking to hijack a life and make friends in the process, Elizabeth Olsen as the Instagram goddess who invites adoration but not intimacy, Wyatt Russell as the goddess’s dumbly sincere …
aka Aftermath and Afterbirth. C’est la guerre — it’s the war. Isn’t it always? World War II is over, but the Russians made the most of their march toward Berlin, with one batch stopping off for a three-day rapefest at a Polish Benedictine convent. Multiple pregnancies ensued (plus at least …
A morality tale of curdled love and corrosive guilt that works, because the morality arises from within - within the characters, within their dealings with each other, within the dim, desperate world they inhabit. Everyone comes in for a measure of sympathy (though sometimes, it's measured out with a heavy …
The Coen brothers, as successful a pair as any in show business today, consider the fate of a '60s folk duo after one of them jumps off a bridge. (This being the Coen brothers, it is of course the wrong bridge: the George Washington instead of the Brooklyn). Surprise, surprise: …
Call it kid-friendly psychology: Pixar's latest begins with a lot of bold (and visually appealing) assumptions: first, that our emotions run the show when it comes to our interior landscape; and second, that those emotions are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. (Whither Envy? Hate? Desire? Best not to ask; …
Nine years ago, Pixar took us inside the mind of young Riley to meet the emotions that guide her: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. At the end of the film — spoiler! — after Joy has learned she can’t just repress Sadness and take the helm at all times, …
First it's unpleasant, then it's boring. The idea was okay: take the spiritual medium from the first two Insidious movies, and explore her backstory. I mean, she's kind of an important figure, and her job isn't exactly easy, what with all the restless demons out there. Why does she keep …