As frequently funny as it is frequently messy, the newest iteration of the Charlie’s Angels franchise has all the ingredients for success but never gets them together. A strong supporting cast, a solid vision for the film, and top-tier department heads should and occasionally do create a zippy action comedy with just enough more on …
Review
To use a baseball metaphor, the idea of Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers is a lot like a 70-mile-per-hour fastball pitched right across the plate to someone like Hank Aaron or Mickey Mantle – you just know that little white stitcher is long gone. Who else but Hanks to play Fred Rogers? You could cast …
In the trailer for Ford v Ferrari, Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) takes Henry Ford Jr. (Tracy Letts) on something of a test ride in the new race car that has been built to attempt to beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France. Shelby drives very fast, making hairpin turns, the race …
There are good films, there are bad films, and there are the worst films — the cinematic equivalents of a five-talent ballplayer who never gets out of the minors. They sound good on paper but just never live up to their potential. Last Christmas is one of those films that should be so much better …
Martin Scorsese is no stranger to the gangster genre. While his oeuvre stretches across almost the entire breadth of 20th-century American cinema (no Western on there… yet), it’s no accident that he is primarily associated with his forays into crime film. They are the touchstones around which his career has been built and — fairly …
If the Terminator films have taught us anything, it’s that freezing an object makes it brittle and easily broken, and putting it back together again requires a lot of molten steel to come pouring out of the smelter you’ve just driven a tanker truck into. At least one of those observations is pertinent to Terminator: …
Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep joins a rapidly rising tidal wave of Stephen King adaptations Hollywood has been releasing in recent years. While the direct sequel to both The Shining novel and movie opens and expands upon the lore within the story’s universe, it does take the film a while to pick up steam. I swear, …
What makes Maleficent: Mistress of Evil so boring? Is it the ramshackle plot that flits from character to character, building up a giant climax without stakes or interest? Is it the strangeness of grafting large action pieces and violent character death onto children’s story characters? Is it the focus on world-building and mythology over character …
Unlike the Twinkie (supposedly), zombie movies don’t seem to have an expiration date. And so we get Zombieland: Double Tap, a 10-years-later sequel to 2009’s Zombieland that, at first blush, doesn’t seem to be a movie we necessarily needed or wanted. Ruben Fleischer’s original film was an enjoyable comedy with some fun, gnarly zombie kills and …
For all the questions about the nature of humanity inherent in the premise, no one has yet made a good movie about cloning. From The 6th Day to Never Let Me Go to even Parts: The Clonus Horror or Duncan Jones’ superior Moon, everyone who comes into contact with the subject seems to prefer it …
Conflict is the basis of drama, and there are few dramatic conflicts as powerful as the exploration of class. Everyone alive feels that conflict – the societal obligations for those who are not well off to rise above their status, while those who are already well off strive to keep their positions while, consciously or …
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is an engine of perfect entertainment. From the opening moments, we are swept into the story and characters, and it feels completely confident and effortless. It’s old-fashioned in all the best ways but it also has modern sensibilities and themes that give the film weight and substance. The murder mystery, as a …
Robert Eggers’ The Witch (or The VVitch if you prefer) is a polarizing film. Now that we have a little distance from it, and now that we’ve seen something of the trends happening in the horror genre since then, that film is a moment in independent film – that there are stories to be told in …
Eddie Murphy is back. The best Eddie Murphy movies are those where it feels like he has something to prove. It’s been a few years since we’ve had a completely engaged Eddie. His strongest films have always been those when Eddie has a little glint in his eye right before he lays his cards on …
These days, science fiction films aren’t necessarily about the ideas but the spectacle. Many have several hundred-million-dollar budgets, gigantic CGI moments, and actors who work against green screens all day playing pretend on a wide scale. And while those films done right are perfectly enjoyable, it feels like something has been lost. Great character work, …
I have been obsessed with Alien since I was nine years old, and my parents refused to take me to a movie theater to see it. For Christmas that year, they bought me a book full of shots from the film, and I closely examined every single frame I could, from the face hugger sequence to …
H. P. Lovecraft is a notoriously difficult author to adapt to film. There have been a thousand riffs off his work over the years, with varying degrees of success, but to directly bring his work to the screen can be problematic at best. Back when authors were paid for every word, during the era of …
Young Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) is a good little Nazi. He worships Adolf Hitler – so much so that he imagines Adolf (Taika Waititi) giving him advice during times of difficulty. In Germany, during the waning days of World War II, Jojo and his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), try to manage an existence together, …
Man is a solitary creature. If there is anything to take from James Gray’s loving and lovingly strange 2001: A Space Odyssey hat tap, it’s the aching hole inside individuals that no amount of exploration or discovery can fill. That may not be particularly comforting to fans of human scientific advancement, but its combination of …
It Chapter Two is a glorious mess. When the decision was made to split Stephen King’s It into two films, it seemed a sensible choice. The novel is over 1,100 pages long, and even the space of two lengthy films couldn’t possibly cover everything. King’s novel not only dives into the characters of the Loser’s Club …