Movie Reviews
Apple founder Steve Jobs once said, “People don’t know what they want until you give it to them.” Maybe he’s right. I never dreamed people would want threequels to The Blair Witch Project and Bridget …
So here’s a spooky horror movie mystery: whatever happened to Before I Wake, a film Wikipedia says is opening today and which features an adorable moppet whose dreams manifest in reality? It seems to have …
The title of Clint Eastwood’s latest, Sully, works as a two-edged nod to both titular hero and what the National Transportation Safety Board wanted to do to his reputation. There isn’t an American alive who …
That title reads better — or gets read better, anyway — with Orson Welles’s voice. So here’s a little snippet on mortality from F for Fake that I pretty much adore in this video. Go …
Light is hardly the word to describe the melodramatic slog that awaits viewers in writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans. After a tour of killing Jerrys in the Great War, bachelor Tom (Oscar®-nominee Michael …
It’s a quiet week on the new-release front, at least in terms of what we were able to see. I wanted Werner Herzog’s take on the Internet in Lo and Behold to be a little …
If the Chuck Heston interpretation of Ben-Hur is comparable to a Classics Illustrated comic book, MGM’s new digital facelift should never have left Turner Network Television. The third (and hopefully final) theatrical reboot, this Ben …
It is the ultimate glorification of sports on film and a testament to the man Max Bialystock would later call, “The Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his …
With the Lickona bunch vacationing in New York, this week’s aggregation of new releases falls on my watch. Speaking of aggregation, according to the generally aggravating Rotten Tomatoes, Hell or High Water is Certified 100% …
The stars align in the Western sky. Hell or High Water is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, tempts me, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might …
How do I know that I am, at heart, a middlebrow critic? Well, partly because I have yet to join my fellow critic Scott in his celebration of the Jackass franchise. But also because I …
Reader ur-critic Duncan Shepherd (who has been showing up on the site of late, praise be) was not a huge fan of the original Bourne trilogy. The first was something of a disappointment, I guess, …
This week sees two films that feature adventures on the fringe of civilization, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Captain Fantastic. Wilderpeople — which zigs and zags from silly to somber (retaining perfect emotional frankness throughout) …
The New Hollywood The central problem seems to be, How can they avoid giving it to Bogdanovich? or to Coppola? or to Nicholson? or to Hoffman? (It should probably be kept in mind that this …
I think it’s fair to say that the comedian Louis CK is squandered in The Secret Life of Pets, but the frustrating thing is, he’s not squandered right away. The opening holds such promise: a …
I never had to tell my daughter to read the book before seeing the movie. All she needed was to see the first film adaptation of her beloved Percy Jackson novels. Now she makes a …