Film review: Blackhat plot remains in the cloud
“Style over substance” is not generally a criticism that sticks to Michael Mann, a singular voice among directors for his unique take on suspense and action. Though there is no shortage of machine gun fire and high speed chases in his films, Mann gives equal weight to small moments of tension or introspection, gorgeous scenery […]
Film review: Selma is a well-crafted portrait of a moment
Among the many artistic and political accomplishments of Ava DuVernay’s Selma is the full embodiment of grassroots activism. After generations of society’s dismantling of the breadth of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s political and ethical contributions down to a single sound bite (that is routinely misappropriated), DuVernay has done King and the world a favor by […]
Film review: Paul Thomas Anderson breaks down Inherent Vice
When a movie is as challenging and divisive as Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, the two reviews to be wary of are the dismissal on grounds of incoherence, and overwhelming praise, full of heady analysis that is itself incoherent. Both approaches make use of the passive voice—“impossible to understand” instead of […]
Under and out: Some of 2014’s best films flew below the radar
Under normal circumstances, assembling a list of a given year’s best films is a simple matter of keeping score as you go, adding and removing movies as the months roll on, knowing full well that your carefully assembled rankings will probably just get blown to hell in the fall when the big studios start rolling […]
Film review: Chris Rock comes close in Top Five
Top Five is not Chris Rock’s first time in the director’s chair, but it is the first time he’s seemed truly comfortable sitting there. For far too long, Rock’s film output has been a pale reflection of his fiery, fearless stand-up persona, consisting mostly of awkwardly paced PG-13 fare or misguided romantic farce. Not that […]
Film review: Exodus: Gods and Kings stumbles under its own weight
The debate over Ridley Scott’s decision to cast white gentiles in Ancient Hebrew and Egyptian roles in Exodus: Gods and Kings is worth having, but it might carry a bit more weight if the movie were any good. If the forced 3D and mixed-bag special effects had matched Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, maybe we’d be able […]
Film review: Horrible Bosses 2 falls back on the original
During one of the many minutes-long stretches of Horrible Bosses 2 that pass by without a single chuckle, your mind may start to wander as you realize how strangely and unintentionally meta it is that a movie about self-employment would become a victim of its own success. It’s as though the makers of the first […]
Film review: Mockingjay Part 1 leaves the audience in limbo
While functionally little more than a cliffhanger setup for the trilogy-and-a-half’s presumably action-packed finale, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 boasts the least likely plot in a PG-13 blockbuster in recent memory. And though, as with most young adult fiction, the central conflict boils down to which of two competing romantic interests the lead character […]
Film review: The Farrellys are no better with age
Think of all the reasons you loved (or grew to love) the first Dumb and Dumber. It was goofy, gross, immature, idiotic and proud of it. Now take each of those qualities and tack on “in a bad way” and you’ve just described its sequel. Arriving 20 years later, yet still feeling undercooked, and with […]
Film review: Disney’s Big Hero 6 brings the cute
In what has already been a surprisingly stellar and abundant year for family entertainment and superhero flicks, casual moviegoers could be forgiven for viewing Disney’s decision to throw its hat in the ring with Big Hero 6, a film that attempts both genres at once, as being driven more by cold number-crunching than good storytelling. […]
Critic pleasers: Six films you don’t want to miss
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Though immensely quotable and every bit as gut-bustingly funny as the day it landed in theaters 50 years ago, one surprising fact about Dr. Strangelove is that it did not begin its life as a comedy. The film is based in part […]
Film review: Keanu reloads as a tough guy in John Wick
It’s about time to revisit the way we talk about Keanu Reeves. For over two decades, his name has been synonymous with stiff acting and dim surfer dudes. But between his stint as a stunningly capable interviewer of film greats in 2012’s Side by Side and his thoroughly enjoyable directorial debut with last year’s Man […]
Film review: Fury defines itself as a cut above formula
As U.S. involvement in foreign wars becomes murkier, aimless, and self-justifying, it’s perhaps natural that some would nostalgically harken back to a time when the goals of military action were seen as absolute and our methods unimpeachable. Leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, comparisons between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler too were frequent, […]
Film review: Despite talented cast The Judge falters
You know you’re in for something when every actor in a movie’s press release gets an individual citation for the role that got them either an Academy Award or a nomination—Robert Downey, Jr. (Chaplin, Tropic Thunder), Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)—while the director must suffer the indignity of admitting to […]
Film review: Imagination runs wild in Annabelle
When it comes to paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, the further a movie moves away from the “true” story as documented by these proven frauds, the better it gets. Despite its success with audiences at the time of its release, going back to watch the aggressively mediocre The Amityville Horror after the many inconsistencies […]
Film review: Denzel Washington team adds sizzle to The Equalizer
Let it hereby be known that director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington are the only team in Hollywood capable of making middle-of-the-road action scripts into movies that are way better than they have any right to be. Before Training Day became the legendary character study it is and the first film in decades to feel […]
Film review: Liam Neeson moves away from the gruff hero bit in A Walk Among the Tombstones
Having spent most of the last decade punching wolves and shooting whomever in pursuit of something or other, Liam Neeson’s career resurgence has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, he’s remained relevant in a genre that usually condemns talented performers to straight-to-DVD purgatory. On the other hand, there is now a very strong […]
Film review: Dolphin Tale 2 is uncomplicated matinee entertainment
Criticism of the aggressively inoffensive Dolphin Tale 2 should be taken with the same grain of salt that the critics themselves took when watching it. This film is not meant for analysis any more than Duck Duck Goose is meant to be played at a professional level, and for the same reason: because kids will […]
Film review: The Last of Robin Hood steals no glory
Not since Raul Julia’s puzzling appearance in the New Jersey Public Television video chroma key disaster “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” has A-level talent looked as out of place as it does in the attempted scandal flick The Last of Robin Hood. But where “Overdrawn” can blame its production value on the fact that it […]
Film review: Pierce Brosnan churns out second-rate action in The November Man
Watching The November Man try its best to be an exciting Bourne-inspired actioner is like listening to someone trip over themselves, so eager to get to the punchline of a joke that they skip key parts of the setup. And just as a botched joke can be unintentionally funny, so too is The November Man […]
Film review: Love story gets muddled in If I Stay
Saying that If I Stay, adapted from Gayle Forman’s blockbuster young adult novel, is bad because it’s overwrought and pretentious is to dismiss a crucial stage of growing up when you yourself are overwrought and pretentious by no real fault of your own. The entire young adult experience is completely unfair. You’re long on feelings […]
Film review: The latest chapter in The Expendables comes up short
Four years and three installments into the Expendables series and we’ve reached what is typically the nail in the coffin for action franchises: the PG-13 sequel. While the rating is essentially meaningless in this age of bloodless gun battles and cramming in as many “shits” as you can but using only one intentionally placed “fuck,” […]
Film review: The updated take on TMNT loses charm
The fact that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn’t as bad as it could have been is a small miracle, given the reverse Midas touch of producer (and not director, another miracle) Michael Bay on preexisting franchises. Considering the film’s primary problems are only that it’s basically a straight-to-DVD actioner with cartoon characters shoehorned in and […]
Film review: James Brown biopic gets it right
Get On Up is the best possible film of an inherently mediocre genre: the biopic. Most biopics render themselves obsolete by failing to admit that when a person is famous, we almost always know the most interesting thing about them because that thing is the reason they’re famous in the first place. Whether the subject […]
Film review: Luc Besson loses direction in the sci-fi wannabe Lucy
It may seem nitpicky in this era of movies about radioactive spider bites and ancient alien stud-gods to take issue with a premise that is basically an excuse for inventive set pieces, but there’s something so incredibly lazy and pointless about the way Luc Besson plays with the old (and false) “Did you know that […]
Film review: The Purge sequel is dragged down by lackluster anarchy
Anyone who has been to an underground or independent film festival is no doubt familiar with a very specific genre of DIY “woods” movies where dudes with guns creep through a forest, talk an awful lot for people trying to remain undetected, and get into strangely choreographed shoot-outs at odd intervals. These movies are made […]
Film review: Monkey schools man in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Confession time: My favorite movie of all time is the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, and it breaks my heart that it doesn’t appear on more Best Of lists. Boasting a script from the eternally relevant Rod Serling, it channels the best aspects of “The Twilight Zone” into a feature-length idea. PotA has it all: […]