Is the structure — Bad News Bears try to win the Internalympics at Google and so get jobs — hackneyed? Yes. Is the comedy spotty? Yes. Is the pacing a mess, with several sort-of funny bits dragging on waaaaay too long? Yes, yes, yes. But viewers of a certain age …
First, the good news: director Ron Howard does right by the whale in this story of the true story behind the greatest fish story of them all, Moby Dick. In contrast to nearly everything else — characters, action, themes — the massive marine mammal is presented clearly, potently, and without …
Sunao Katabuchi directed and co-wrote this beautifully painted, emotionally muted anime adaptation of Hiroshima native Fumiyo Kōno’s manga series of the same name. The story’s origin as a serial shows; what dramatic shape there is here stems largely from events outside the characters’ control. This happens, and then this happens... …
Steven Sondheim's musical theater meditation on the complication, compromise, and carnality that adulthood brings to the fairy-tale world of children's fairy tales, gently Disneyfied for younger audiences eager to sing along. (Don't fret when Johnny Depp's leering Big Bad Wolf lifts his leg to block Little Red Riding Hood's progress; …
A showcase from director-star Ralph Fiennes, he of the fierce visage and pleading eyes. First, it is a visual marvel — the framing is now theatrical, now unobtrusive, but always masterful and appropriate. Second, it is a triumph of characterization. Nobody makes speeches; nobody has to. Fiennes plays Charles Dickens, …
Humanistic sci-fi from director Mike Cahill (Another Earth), insofar as it sympathizes with the human longings for both understanding and transcendent mystery. Ian (Michael Pitt) is a scientist seeking an orderly, elegant proof of the random mutations that eventually produced the human eye. Sofi (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) is a manic pixie …
Writer-director Sean Durkin broke through in 2011 with Martha Marcy May Marlene, the story of a young woman who has escaped from a cult and must now find a way to reconnect with her family. But here, the cult is the family, and the only hope lies in escape, which …
A hot mess. Iron Man 3 does what a third installment tends to do: revisit the themes of the first (personal failings giving rise to public disasters), make everything bigger and more complicated, and then deliver some kind of grand resolution. And while director Shane Black brings a manic energy …
A hot mess. Iron Man 3 does what a third installment tends to do: revisit the themes of the first (personal failings giving rise to public disasters), make everything bigger and more complicated, and then deliver some kind of grand resolution. And while director Shane Black brings a manic energy …
Woody Allen at his most exhausted and self-parodying. A philosophy professor (a begutted Joaquin Phoenix) — newly arrived for the summer session at a quaint Rhode Island college, and bored with himself, philosophy, and life in general — finds inspiration in the notion of directly, concretely making the world a …
Bad man makes good music. Or, perhaps more strangely, sad man makes happy music. (Spoiler alert: we don’t hear the plaintive croon of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” until the closing credits. Instead, we see and hear a rousing rendition of “Hey Good Lookin’.”) Screenwriter and director Marc Abraham’s …
Jane Schoenbrun's followup to We're All Going to the World's Fair has been hailed as a breakthrough cinematic treatment of gender dysphoria. Maybe so, but it's a good enough piece of art to bear multiple interpretations; for your humble correspondent, it played as an almost shockingly effective evocation of How …
A delight, albeit one that is red in tooth and claw. Wes Anderson’s stop-motion Japanese folk tale about dogs and their people opens with a Japanese folk tale about dogs and their people (and also, cats and their people). And midway through, there’s a display of Kabuki theater that almost …
Director (and co-writer here) Arnaud Desplechin has made three films featuring Paul Dédalus. In those films, Paul has a diplomat brother named Ivan. Ismael’s Ghosts opens with a scene from a film-in-progress about Ivan Dédalus made by one Ismaël Vuillard, played with wild-eyed abandon by Mathieu Amalric, the same actor …
There are moments in Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a quaint-yet-cursed Maine village (Very Bad Things happen every 27 years, many of them having to do with kids) where the sights and sounds are enough. Those are 12-year-old kids up there on the screen seeing their worst …