Early on in Stanley J. Nelson’s reverential, lovingly illustrated primer on the jazz legend, its subject (or rather, an actor rasping out his words in a decent facsimile) says, “Living is an adventure and a challenge. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe.” True enough: anyone who knows their …
Poophat, peeface, fartneedle, sheepeen, spoocheek. There, glad that's out of the way. Though it's all worth mentioning, because it's the sort of "outrageous" gross-out gaggery that co-writer/director/producer/star Seth MacFarlane slops onto what otherwise looks like his childhood dream of making a straightforward, sentimental, white-hat/black-hat Western about a decent sheep farmer …
Tarsem Singh brings his flair for visual composition to the fairy tale genre, and the modesty of scale reins him in to good effect. But the star of this Snow White adaptation isn’t the scenery, nor the workaday comedy, nor even Snow White herself (an adorable Lilly Collins), even if …
A scattershot but intriguing account of a year or so in the life of the artistic community in Edo during the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate. When we meet O-Ei, she is a young woman living with her father Hokusai, a (real-life) great painter who is not a great …
The Summer of Echoes continues in surprising fashion: who woulda thunk that the much-lauded Mission: Impossible series would trot out so many of the same elements as the rather less-lauded Fast & Furious franchise — specifically, Fast X? Where to start, besides a lengthy runtime and a half-finished story? How …
There’s a moment near the beginning of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s stunt-reel in search of a movie when the attention is caught and the interest roused in altogether unexpected fashion. Can-do American agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission: Rogue agent…terror for hire…evil network…nuclear …
There’s a moment near the beginning of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s stunt-reel in search of a movie when the attention is caught and the interest roused in altogether unexpected fashion. Can-do American agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission: Rogue agent…terror for hire…evil network…nuclear …
There’s a moment near the beginning of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s stunt-reel in search of a movie when the attention is caught and the interest roused in altogether unexpected fashion. Can-do American agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission: Rogue agent…terror for hire…evil network…nuclear …
Tom Cruise returns, and reliably so, to his role as gadget-happy superspy Ethan Hunt, but the real star is director Brad Bird, trying his hand at live action after a successful stint in the animated world. Happily, he brings the best parts of his cartoony past with him, creating wild …
Children plays a cruel trick. After the ponderous opening monologue about whether anything you do really matters (this is adapted from a YA novel, after all), the opening is vintage Tim Burton: a splendidly gangly social outcast (Asa Butterfield) gets a panicked call from his beloved, dementia-addled grandpa (Terrence Stamp), …
A winning, slightly screwball investigation of the fraught relationship between writer and subject, or maybe artist and muse, or maybe both. The second collaboration between Greta Gerwig (star and co-writer) and Noah Baumbach (director and co-writer) — the first was the cheerfully modern Frances Ha — tells the story of …
Midway through, disgraced demigod Maui calls spunky quest-taker Moana a princess. She objects by noting that she’s actually a chief’s daughter, but he’ll have none of it: “You’re wearing a skirt, and you’ve got an animal sidekick — you’re a princess.” At another point, he warns her that if she …
Midway through, disgraced demigod Maui calls spunky quest-taker Moana a princess. She objects by noting that she’s actually a chief’s daughter, but he’ll have none of it: “You’re wearing a skirt, and you’ve got an animal sidekick — you’re a princess.” At another point, he warns her that if she …
Midway through, disgraced demigod Maui calls spunky quest-taker Moana a princess. She objects by noting that she’s actually a chief’s daughter, but he’ll have none of it: “You’re wearing a skirt, and you’ve got an animal sidekick — you’re a princess.” At another point, he warns her that if she …
As with last year’s The Void, Mohawk is wonderfully long on setting, mood, and practical effects, and woefully short on storytelling and drama. It concerns a Mohawk woman named Oak (Kanietiio Horn), her two lovers — one Mohawk, one English — and their efforts to rally her people to fight …