Tag: Roundup

Lilies of the Field

Lilies of the Field reflects the early 1960s frame of its creation. Sentimental and obvious, Poitier plays a bridge between Cold War religiosity and then-bubbling Civil Rights agitation. –November 30, 2024

West Side Story

Impressive, most off all for reconstructing mid-1950s Midtown Manhattan. I’m Just not sure if Spielberg’s West Side Story is something great or completely unnecessary. –November 30, 2024

Wicked: Part I

With low expectations, you’ll be blown away by Wicked: Part I. The performers are great, and I cried in the Ozdust Ballroom, but it runs for 160 minutes with no end in sight. –November 30, 2024

Fast Food Nation

Turning journalism into fiction, Richard Linklater uses character wikis to explore our Fast Food Nation. The movie deserves more attention, but animal slaughter is hard to watch. –November 30, 2024

United 93

Unpleasant and brilliant, United 93 rightly makes 9/11 into a whirl of shock and confusion. –November 30, 2024

Visiting Hours

Shatner roosters in Visiting Hours, and there is real fun in seeing early Michael Ironside. –October 31, 2024

Babel

Babel made me uncomfortable in 2006. Now that discomfort signals greatness. –October 31, 2024

The Guilty

A corrupt cop works emergency dispatch in The Guilty. With limited knowledge of a crime, a real time investigation makes reel time into something poignant. –October 31, 2024

Locke

Tom Hardy carries Locke, a movie about a man driving his car on the worst-best day of his life. Gimmicky, yes, but well-produced. –October 31, 2024

The Departed

Scorsese has fun with material about unexpected violence and foul language. Peak for Jack Nicholson wearing a gray “Irish” t-shirt. –October 31, 2024

Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls is a brilliant tour of Black artistry from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s. Terrific design. Wonderful songs. And Eddie Murphy steals each scene like the star he is. –October 31, 2024

Kaboom

See Kaboom for Gregg Araki’s throw-everything-at-a-zero-budget story to see what sticks. Like beautiful naked people sharing end-of-times nightmares. –October 31, 2024

The Wizard of Oz

Re-watch The Wizard of Oz, and you’ll re-discover a fable about head trauma that documents Judy Garland’s ascent to the summit of child exploitation. –October 31, 2023

Jesus Camp

A horror movie about Christian nationalism, Jesus Camp investigates the religious indoctrination of children, noting very little regard for charity or kindness. –September 30, 2024

American Fiction

Take 1: Stereotypes sell, and American Fiction explores Black American stereotypes of upper middle-class life. It’s funny, human, and centrally about how to create art. Take 2: American Fiction is about an academic withering away in pursuit of his art, only to discover the world doesn’t want big ideas anymore, kind of like this roundup from an academic… Continue reading American Fiction

Little Miss Sunshine

A showcase for situational dysfunction, Little Miss Sunshine is a comic masterpiece. –September 30, 2024

The Lives of Others

The Life of Others is about an East German cop tasked with destroying an artist on the communist side of the Berlin Wall. Maybe the best movie of its year. –September 30, 2024

Rebel Ridge

A fable about underfunded police bureaucracy, Rebel Ridge employs dazzling talent to mimic better movies. Foremost among them: First Blood. –September 30, 2024

Night at the Museum

Night at the Museum is a grade schooler’s fantasy that’s perfectly forgettable. –September 30, 2024

Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is obviously brilliant, but it’s hard to forgive how desirable the filmmakers make the Confederacy.  –September 30, 2024

Phone Booth

Handsome Irishman angers sociopath, or Phone Booth: a gimmick movie with solid thrills. –September 30, 2024

Taxi

Americans know little about Iran. Taxi is a corrective to show Iranians as a varied people in a docu-fiction study of state control, family, art, and car service. –September 30, 2024

Noryang: The Sea of Death

Noryang: The Sea of Death ends a truth-adjacent historical trilogy about how South Korean turned back a Japanese invasion in the 1500s. Key point: SK had a stylish and daring admiral. –August 31, 2024

Threads

Just for fun, I watched Threads with friends and was forced to recall my boyhood worry about nuclear Armageddon, which is the setup for this genius-bummer of a BBC movie from 1984. –August 31, 2024

The Matrix Resurrections

Keanu Reeves is the boyfriend we all want, but even he can’t save The Matrix Resurrections from being a third unnecessary sequel to one of cinema’s paradigm-shifting masterworks. –August 31, 2024

9

9 is about a ragdoll defending Earth from a machine, or The Terminator meets LOTR. –August 31, 2024

The Beekeeper

The Beekeeper is a live-action cartoon, in which Jason Statham does to telemarketers what we all want done to them after they hurt Mrs. Huxtable. –August 31, 2024

Don’t Look Up

Leo and J Law headline Don’t Look Up, a satire of American values and celebrity culture that starts with an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. See Meryl Streep’s body double naked, too! –August 31, 2024

Inside Man

A heist story with a trick ending, Inside Man is among Spike Lee’s whitest movies, and it works best because Denzel Washington dazzles in the long shadow of 9/11. –August 31, 2024

Under Paris

Under Paris enters Jaws in the 2024 Summer Olympics, but it’s a real qui coule merde (runny turd). –July 31, 2024

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire aspires to, and is, passable entertainment for a slow weekend spent coiled in front of the TV. –July 31, 2024

Godzilla Minus One

Combining histrionics with WWII counterfactuals, Godzilla Minus One sets the stage for Honda’s original Godzilla by bringing down the monster with the bends. –July 31, 2024

The Fault in Our Stars

You think, this will be terrible. Then you watch The Fault in Our Stars and wonder, am I too old to identify with teen cancer patients when their parents seem so lovely? –July 31, 2024

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

So much better than I anticipated, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a fable of female coming-of-age that leans hard on a preteen dying of cancer. –July 31, 2024

Civil War

Civil War does a great job framing vignettes of a fallen America. But it’s no good at suggesting how the eponymous conflict began or what follows. –July 31, 2024

About Time

About Time plays loose with time travel so a Brit can love an American. But the best romance, here, is the Father/Son bond that should be what this thing is about. –June 30, 2024

Road House

After coasting along for 45 minutes, Road House slogs through a wall of stupid. –May 31, 2024

Grease 2

Regularly listed among the worst movies ever made, Grease 2 earns its low regard, even with Adrian Zmed doing his best John Travolta. –May 31, 2024

Dune: Part Two

Despite an unsatisfying cliffhanger, Dune: Part Two is sensually brilliant. Totally works on a big screen with rumbling speakers. –May 31, 2024

Chicken Run

Chicken Run is better than I remember because I now understand its satire of beautiful men (as in vocal performer Mel Gibson) and WWII POW movies and TV shows. –May 31, 2024

Riders of Justice

Riders of Justice is about a Dutch soldier who rolls up a gang he thinks murdered his wife. But they didn’t. Praise for Mads Mikkelsen, here, wearing a beard. –May 31, 2024

Eating Raoul

Watching At the Movies is how I first heard about weird art. Eating Raoul is one such independent gem. Cue the meat grinder. –May 31, 2024

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is familiar and long, and it defines the rather-stunning current limit of what image capture can accomplish. –May 31, 2024

The Equalizer 3

Denzel kills deserving, 2-D bad guys in The Equalizer 3. Not good, but totally watchable. –April 30, 2024

Raise the Titanic

Titanic was central to the fighting the Cold War. See Raise the Titanic and find out why. –April 30, 2024

Bend It Like Beckham

Bend It Like Beckham connects immigrant assimilation with sports mythology to suggest women are people, too. –April 30, 2024

Over the Hedge

Composite

Take 1: Suburbia kills, especially woodland herbivores, or so goes the plot of Over the Hedge. Enjoy it for in-jokes about American consumerism, and think about whether it has a happy ending. Take 2: Over the Hedge ends with 100% dead animals before phase two construction. –October 31, 2024

Mulan

Animated Mulan is better than live-action Mulan because, “I’ll make a man out of you.” –April 30, 2024

Toy Story

CGI has advanced a lot since 1995, but Toy Story remains alive with charm and a Classical Style plot that employs voice actors I’d like as neighbors. –March 31, 2023

Enough Said

People grow older and change, and we mostly ignore them after age 30. Enough Said tilts the frame of reference to middle age and gets great performances from Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in one of his last roles. –March 31, 2023

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

Ruder and lewder than I remember, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a great satire of censorship hypocrisy and American exceptionalism. –March 31, 2024

Past Lives

Magic on a small scale, Past Lives explores a young immigrant woman’s life as she considers relationship pathways she didn’t take. The final scene lingers long after “the end”. –March 31, 2024

The Creator

The Creator looks terrific, even though most of the story world and plot refers to other, often better movies. –March 31, 2024

Miss Hokusai

Miss Hokusai is a lovely technical achievement that doesn’t cohere as entertainment. –March 31, 2024

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Saccharine and built on broad stereotypes, My Big Fat Greek Wedding has a supporting cast that overwhelms two leads of no great distinction. –March 31, 2024

Lilo & Stitch

Lilo & Stitch puts brown girls at Disney’s core with Stitch as an echo of Gollum. –February 29, 2024

The Villainess

The Villainess presents a solid, So Ko, action story that I enjoyed but can no longer recall. –February 29, 2024

Surf’s Up

Take 1: It shouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is, but Surf’s Up has always pleased me from its hero worship theme, through its reality TV execution, to its surfer lingo. My kids have a Big Z plastic toy somewhere in the house, too. Take 2: Re-watching Surf’s Up made me nostalgic for its Happy Meal toys. –February 29,… Continue reading Surf’s Up

American Symphony

American Symphony is the best romance-turned biography of the decade. –February 29, 2024

Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir animates one man’s autobiography around the horror of service in the Israeli Defense Force. Powerful stuff for all it suggests and refers to and considers. –February 29, 2024

Blancanieves

Blancenieves is an update of Snow White. Its very existence as a black and white, silent film from 2012 that uses modern tools for nostalgic purposes is both impressive and annoying. –February 29, 2024

Bros

Bros alternates between lots of Queer sex and nuanced monologues about identity, integrity, and love. Plus, it’s laugh-out-loud funny entertainment. –January 31, 2024

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Harrison Ford is de-aged in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, an overlong and mostly lame summer tentpole, but it does reunite Marion with Indy, a true showstopper. –January 31, 2024

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Much stranger than I anticipated, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the one where Michael Cera does a Michael Cera impression inside a video game allegory as live action cartoon. –January 31, 2024

The Boys in the Boat

Repetitive, obvious, and self-serious, The Boys in the Boat is a wasteful bore. –December 31, 2023

The Holdovers

It’s Christmas 1970, and The Holdovers showcases Paul Giamatti as a boarding school teacher with a soft spot for a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a boy who can’t go home for the holidays. Heady, wonderful stuff. –December 31, 2023

Lords of Dogtown

Lords of Dogtown is a biopic about how skateboarding caught on, and it made me think about the boys I avoided in my youth because they were trespasser-athletes inventing a sport I’m now too old to try. And I was right. –December 31, 2023

The Purge

The Purge works because it doesn’t embroider dystopia. At 85 minutes, it’s not too much, not too little, but just right. –December 31, 2023

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

I didn’t like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit when I first saw it. On second viewing, I enjoyed the voices of Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, and Helena Bonham Carter. –December 31, 2023

Yellow Rose

Yellow Rose is about an undocumented Filipina teen with dreams of singing country music. Unexpectedly touching. –December 31, 2023

Polite Society

In Polite Society, two Pakistani-British sisters foil an incestuous plot about finding perfect wombs. Fast-moving. Entertaining. Terrific. –December 31, 2023

Wonka

Within one minute, I disliked Wonka. Because I bought a regular-price ticket, I also got to regret my choice for the next 115 minutes. –December 31, 2023

Water

Water is great. But it’s about an eight-year-old widow in India who is banished, for life, to a widows’ ashram where the older widows want to give her something more.  –December 30, 2023

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire smolders because it accepts the practical realities of Queer women-as-chattel in the late 1700s. It also provides a glimpse of joy among lesbians, which is hot stuff that doubles as a thoughtful commentary about art making. –December 31, 2023

The Killer

Style over content: The Killer is another Fincher clinic on technique that only holds together because I like Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton Tilda’s the joint. –December 31, 2023

A Quiet Place Part II

A Quiet Place Part II doesn’t measure up to the original. But it does look to the far side of an apocalyptic alien invasion to see how humans might survive in a bucolic setting. –December 31, 2023

Last Christmas

Last Christmas is reassuring, sentimental claptrap starring good looking people. –December 31, 2023

A Silent Voice

There is no reason to become emotionally invested in animated movies. They’re clearly artificial. But you can invest in them, and you might want to, and I did with A Silent Voice. –November 30, 2023

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

No Sandler fan am I, but You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah minimizes his presence to center on girls coming of age, and it’s a delight to watch alongside a girl coming of age. –November 30, 2023

Chronicle

Chronicle is too long, but it does cast a needed pall over superhero stories that has since been mastered by The Boys. –November 30, 2023

Leave No Trace

Leave No Trace explores freedom and independence, among other juicy bits, through the story of a single dad veteran with PTSD and the journey of his daughter into womanhood. –November 30, 2023

Grizzly Man

Don’t mess with nature is the message of Grizzly Man, in which a wild man-turned-bear’s meal gallivants across Alaska. –November 30, 2023

Brokeback Mountain

My reaction has shifted in time. I now think Brokeback Mountain may be the finest movie of 2005 and among the finest Westerns ever made. –November 30, 2023

Murderball

Disability is a tough subject, and Murderball adjusts our POV through a sports story that makes me cry. –November 30, 2023

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is stunning and fast-moving and fun until you realize its only purpose is delivering a franchise cliffhanger that stinks of poor organization. –November 30, 2023

Those Who Wish Me Dead

I want to be a Taylor Sheridan completist, so I had swallowed the nonsense of To Those Who Wish Me Deadto prepare for Yellowstone. –November 30, 2023

The Marvels

The Marvels cost $200 million+ to make a spray of CGI vision-scapes, but the best scene is the titular three heroines practicing Double Dutch. –November 30, 2023

Ballerina

Totally efficient, violent nonsense. Ballerina defines form over content. –November 30, 2023

Faces Places

Faces Places centers on how art creates memories that can be thoughtfully considered. Magnificent. The penultimate work of Agnès Varda approaching her 90th birthday. –November 30, 2023

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Steve Carell was “just” a TV star. Then he made The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Judd Apatow’s gang of misfit geniuses to become a big screen sensation. The waxing scene makes me pee. –November 30, 2023

Primer

Take 1: Two dudes time travel in Primer, a shoestring-budgeted story of invention that impresses through jargon and nerd work. Take 2: It’s slow until the moment you realize you’re no longer sure who, or what, Primer is about. –October 31, 2024

The Forest for the Trees

Imagine being idealistic and failing at everything. The Forest for the Trees is a cringe-binge flick for educators. –October 31, 2023

Showing Up

In Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt observes an arts school and the community around it. On-the-nose observations about self-involved creators will leave most viewers cold. –October 31, 2023

Lovesong

Lovesong is a Queer story within the norms of heterosexual family and marriage, and you’ll want to see these two young women avoid tragic stereotypes to end up happy. –October 31, 2023

Tsotsi

Ask yourself, “what’s the next right thing to do?” Tsotsi considers the question after a South African teenager steals a car with an infant inside it. Provocative and satisfying. –October 31, 2023

A History of Violence

Cronenberg does a slow burn in A History of Violence. It’s a lot of nothing, really, but the set pieces turn a hitman (aka Strider) back into a family man (aka Aragorn). –October 31, 2023

Titane

A girl gets hurt in a car accident. As an adult she murders people, has sex with a car, becomes pregnant, and gives birth to a hybrid child. I’m not making this up. See Titane? –October 31, 2023

Cameraperson

Cameraperson is the memoir of a cinematographer (Kirsten Johnson) who uses outtakes to consider life, death, pain, satisfaction, and beauty. I cried three times. –October 31, 2023

Syriana

At first glance it’s complicated. Then Syriana reveals how limited resources are hunted by too many greedy people, foremost among them: human connection. –October 31, 2023

Champions

It’s Bad News Bears for Gen A: Champions stars Woody Harrelson as a difficult man who is loyal to the special needs athletes he forms into a team.  –October 31, 2023

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour presents breathtaking photography of the most dominant voice in pop music today. Must have been a real drag for front row concertgoers. –October 31, 2023

Black Dynamite

1970s Blaxploitation is mostly awful, save for the songs, threads, and sex. Black Dynamite amplifies what’s awful to let us in on the joke of great satire. –October 31, 2023

War of the Worlds

Tom Cruise is a blue-collar hero in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, an apocalyptic metaphor for 9/11, but the pathogenic conclusion isn’t satisfying after 90+ minutes of awesome. –October 31, 2023

Ida

Ida is an orphaned Polish woman preparing to enter the convent in 1962. Then she discovers she is the child of slaughtered Jewish Holocaust victims. It’s in black and white and short, and it’s painful and terrific. –October 31, 2023

Joy Ride

Joy Ride is filthy and brilliant. –October 31, 2023

Kung Fu Panda

Though there is a movie and TV franchise to sample, the original Kung Fu Panda remains enjoyable every time I see it. –October 31, 2023

Evil of Dracula

Stoker’s monster is the basis for Evil of Dracula, wherein vampires enter present-day Japan. It’s not good, but it is a curious entry into the cycle of 1970s nostalgic horror movies.  –October 31, 2023

The Faculty

Assume you missed seeing The Faculty because life got in the way. When you finally do see it, you may wish life had gotten in the way again. –October 31, 2023

Four Weddings and Funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral is Hugh Grant’s star-turn because of his misfit group of besties that resemble your friends. –September 30, 2023

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is a satisfying work about aging courageously despite the pressure to conform. Plus, the year 1970 looks terrific in the sets, costumes, and props. –September 30, 2023

Claire’s Camera

Claire’s Camera has partisans who love filmmaker Hong Sang-Soo. I’m not among them. –September 30, 2023

Lou

Imagine the pitch meeting: let’s re-make The Equalizer with Oscar-winner Allison Janney. Ignore the algorithm if Lou comes up next. It’s terrible. –September 30, 2023

In a World…

In a World… is a Hollywood in-joke about patriarchal assumption. It’s also quite funny and worth seeing because legions of people make the entertainment we enjoy without thinking about who makes what. –September 30, 2023

Enter the Void

Gaspar Noé makes difficult movies. EX: Enter the Void, which features non-simulated sex, drug use, stylized camera work, Tokyo, and bad acting for close to three hours.  –September 30, 2023

Blackfish

Blackfish is about captive mammals that kill people. And you’ll believe they were justified. –September 30, 2023

Fruitvale Station

Michael B. Jordan became a star in Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler’s movie about Oscar Grant, a troubled young man trying to make good until he was killed by a transit cop. –September 30, 2023

Hi, Mom

Hi, Mom is among the most commercially successful movies ever made by a woman. It’s also an emotionally satisfying story centered on a mother/daughter time loop narrative that earned more than $800 million at the box office in China. During COVID. With no US release. –September 30, 2023

A Man Called Otto

Sentimental and manipulative in all the right ways, A Man Called Otto is another evidentiary submission in the case for why Tom Hanks can do no wrong. –September 30, 2023

Petite Maman

Petite Maman is a gem of a story about time travel used to work through the death of an elder. Another victory lap for Céline Sciamma. –September 30, 2023

Devotion

Devotion is a true-to-life military story of inter-racial friendship. It’s also neither good nor bad, although Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell are both ridiculously beautiful. –August 31, 2023

Glass Onion

Glass Onion is ensemble fun as an evening’s distraction. Look for spot-on jabs at rich folks and COVID protocols and enjoy Janelle Monae as Daniel Craig’s better half. –August 31, 2023

Test Pattern

The politics of medical care collide with a rape story in Test Pattern, wherein a Black woman endures sexual assault, and her White boyfriend pushes her to visit a doctor. –August 31, 2023

Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy, like all of Kelly Reichardt’s works, is a story of struggle. Lucy is a wonderful dog-performer, but the story rests on Michelle Williams’s Wendy who can’t catch a break. –August 31, 2023

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Conversion therapy seems bogus on its face. The Miseducation of Cameron Post shows us why in a touching, terrifying, and satisfying story of self-acceptance and found family. –August 31, 2023

All Is Lost

All Is Lost showcases Redford doing the next right thing in a series of ocean sailing crises. And there’s just one minutes of dialogue. Excellent. –August 31, 2023

Shall We Dance?

In Shall We Dance? J Lo instructs Richard Gere how to make love to Susan Sarandon, but it works because Stanley Tucci and Bobby Cannavale also take the floor. –August 31, 2023

Barbie

Having defined 2023, Barbie is great entertainment, minor art, and terrific bu$ine$$. –August 31, 2023

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home puts Holland, Garfield, and Maguire—our three Spider-Men—on-screen together, but it never escapes being a repetitive, multi-verse gimmick, especially when Peter-One Thanos-snaps himself out of memory. –August 31, 2023

Black Sea

In Black Sea, Jude Law leads a crew of submariners searching for lost Nazi gold. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. –July 31, 2023

Brightwood

Combining elements from Scenes from a Marriage with Stalker and Blair Witch Project, the indie Brightwood explores a failing romance that further disintegrates under the pressures of an endless time loop. –July 31, 2023

Ticket to Paradise

Clooney and Roberts chew scenes of no consequence. Ticket to Paradise isn’t. –July 31, 2023

They Shall Not Grow Old

Colorization mangles source footage for commercial appeal. Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Oldembraces this potential and marries colorization with sound recordings of now-dead soldiers to arrive at something upsettingly, impressively, vivid. –July 31, 2023

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Little Tommy Cruise works so hard that I hate being a troll who complains about how Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is too long and overstuffed. But the stunts are magnificent, and Esai Morales steals every one of his scenes. –July, 2023

65

Adam Driver’s glorious mane co-stars in 65, a silly, counterfactual story of aliens crashing to Earth one day before the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor. And you’ll root for the meteor. –July 31, 2023

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is unexpectedly gruesome. My eyes got misty (for Rocket). I wondered when it would end (150-minute run time!). Yet the found families theme really is the heart of the MCU. –June, 2023

Extraction 2

I loved Extraction, but I don’t love Extraction 2. Why? We see stunts presented with impossibly well-kitted-out bad guys that Chris Hemsworth mows down for reasons I forgot.  –June, 2023

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting while waiting to become a parent. I watched the romcom adaptation and mostly enjoyed the stay-at-home dads led by Chris Rock. –June 30, 2023

In the Heart of the Sea

Add up the source behind Moby Dick, Chris Hemsworth as a natural brunette, one big white whale, and BOOM, a likable hit, right? No. In the Heart of the Sea is emotionally flat and kind of a slog. –June 30, 2023

Cabin Boy

Cabin Boy is high art to people that love David Letterman. But I’m not one of them. –June 30, 2023

Death on the Nile

You look at the cast and think, “It’ll be good”. Then Death on the Nile unravels through ostentatious camera tricks to solve a no-stakes murder. I nonetheless hope it spawns many chapters in the Agatha Christie-verse. –June 30, 2023

Pumping Iron

Pitching Pumping Iron by contextualizing the history of bodybuilding is a fast track to yawns. Instead, notice how it’s the story of nearly naked men cruising each other while starving themselves on the way to a public pose down that made Arnold famous. –May 31, 2023

The Sea Wolf

The Sea Wolf was born on Jack London’s desk, and Michael Curtiz made it sing in the movie adaptation about despotism in the world of sea pirates starring Edward G. Robinson. Ida Lupino is the lone woman, and it’s hard to ignore how this fact informs much pornography. –May 31, 2023

The Iron Giant

As a fable about friendship, The Iron Giant is sentimental entertainment. As a story of militarism in the face of the “Other”, it’s a thoughtful consideration of tolerance.  –May 31, 2023

The Caine Mutiny

Herman Wouk wrote the best-selling novel, and Bogart stoked the movie adaptation. The Caine Mutinydramatizes military incompetence while speaking truth to power with Jose Ferrar stealing scenes as Lee Marvin and Claude Akins offer themselves in early bit parts. –May 31, 2023

My Octopus Teacher

My Octopus Teacher is a beautiful-looking nature documentary about a man who falls in love with a mollusc on the way to accepting his place in the natural world. –May 31, 2023

The Mother

You start The Mother hoping it will work. But it doesn’t as a Bond-ian/Wick-ian/Reacher-ian actioner starring a woman, although J Lo’s locks look terrific. –May 31, 2023

AV: The Hunt

The New York Times praised five non-American action movies. I tried one out: AV: The Hunt. I’m filled with regret. –May 31, 2023

Beyond the Lights

The point of Beyond the Lights: it’s hard to be mixed race, talented, young, and famous, especially when you’re conventionally beautiful and suffer from imposter syndrome.  –May 31, 2023

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is not great. When the stop-motion hero submits to fascism in Italy during World War II, though, it works exceedingly well. –May 31, 2023

Hit Man

Bernie Casey jumps from the gridiron to the silver screen in Hit Man. Borderline senseless, but it features early Pam Grier, an awesome soundtrack, explosive violence, and great threads that make me yearn. –May 31, 2023

Kill Boksoon

In Kill Boksoon, a John Wick-adjacent South Korean female assassin “pre-sees” outcomes for each violent encounter she initiates. Wholesome bloodshed, through and through. –April 30, 2023

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Rudd is back in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The premise: small things can be dangerous, which is obvious if you’ve ever held a baby. –April 30, 2023

47 Meters Down

Two sisters pick-up some sharks in Mexico. 47 Meters Down is diverting and dumb, and it stays on the low side of an R-rating. –April 30, 2023

Creep

The low budget mumblecore Creep is a good role model for filmmakers but also a bore. –April 30, 2023

Hansan: Rising Dragon

The middle part of a trilogy, Hansan: Rising Dragon is the backstory of Korean admiral Yi Sun-sin, circa 1592, who defeats a Japanese invasion in terrific naval battles. –April 30, 2023

Child’s Play

Billy Bibbit turns on the charm as “Chucky”, a Good Guy Doll, in Child’s Play, a master class in POV camera, animatronics, and nonsense that’s great fun for everyone. –April 30, 2023

The Squid and the Whale

Take 1: All failed marriages are embarrassing, and The Squid and the Whale shows us how two parents and their two children can be profanely and specifically funny in the most uncomfortable, embarrassing ways possible. Take 2: The Squid and the Whale showcases Jeff Daniels pushing unlikability to an extreme while remaining sympathetic. –October 31, 2023

The Hunger Games: The Mockingjay – Part 2

The Hunger Games: The Mockingjay – Part 2 ends with Katniss making an impossible shot while savvy politicians exploit her rebellion to form a new central authority. Election 2024?  –March 31, 2023

Monster-in-Law

I wanted to like Jane Fonda being mean to J Lo, but Monster-in-Law is crummy.  –March 31, 2023

Lila & Eve

Lila & Eve is about a ghost and a mourning mother. Neither role serves Davis or Lopez well.   –March 31, 2023

John Wick: Chapter 4

John Wick: Chapter 4 is 169 minutes long. Wait for the shorter YouTube fights supercut. –March 31, 2023

Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise locks into a “whatever happened to so and so?” storyline with Top Gun: Maverick, which satisfies for 90 minutes before descending into CGI silly. –March 31, 2023

Cloverfield

MTV’s The Real World + Godzilla = Cloverfield. The gimmick is found footage, and it works because agreeable actors perform confusion and fear. –February 28, 2023

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

The Hunger Games: The Mockingjay – Part 1 is the one where we learn that Katniss Everdeen’s rebellion serves Julianne Moore’s awesome gray dye job.  –February 28, 2023

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge

See Pauly Shore in a Morgan Fairchild IP about a fire victim-turned-vigilante in Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge. Joe Bob Briggs played it in a double feature. ‘Nuff said. –February 28, 2023

Nekromantik

Germans can be bonkers, as in Nekromantik, where a necrophiliac explores his appetites through one of the most memorable and cringe-inducing “climaxes” ever. –February 28, 2023

Mad God

Phil Tippet worked for 30-years on his stop motion passion project Mad God, which consists of GI Joe dolls hiding from defecating cave trolls. Terribly memorable without making sense. –February 28, 2023

Strange World

Strange World is a DEI animated fantasy that feels like the lesser parts of Moana and Fantastic Voyage. –February 28, 2023

Second Act

Second Act is a J Lo vehicle where she plays a 40-year grocery store manager with ambition but no degree. Accidents happen, she succeeds. Blah. –February 28, 2023

F/X2

I saw F/X2 for free, which is the only price to pay to watch this silly mess. –February 28, 2023

Wag the Dog

Wag the Dog was made during Clinton’s second term before Lewinsky. It’s the story of covering up a president’s sexual misdeeds with a manufactured war, and it features De Niro and Hoffman. Genius. –February 28, 2023

Tomboy

Shot from the height of a child, mostly in mid-shots and close-ups, Celine Schiamma’s Tomboy is about (a) a transboy; (b) a young lesbian with masculine presentation; (c) sibling love; and (d), all of the above.  –February 28, 2023

This is Spinal Tap

If this is funny, This is Spinal Tap is for you: IAN: They’re not gonna release the album because they’ve decided that the cover is sexist. NIGEL: Well, so what? What’s wrong with being sexy? IAN: Sex-ist! DAVID: -IST! –February 28, 2023

The Wedding Planner

McConaughey and J Lo are so beautiful it hurts to stare too long. But The Wedding Planner demonstrates their total lack of character chemistry. –January 31, 2023

UHF

UHF is a TV variety show stuffed into a feature film, and it’s not any good, save as Gen X nostalgia. Still, Weird Al’s Rambo impression is brilliant without qualification. –January 31, 2023

5 Centimeters per Second

Take 1: 5 Centimeters per Second is visually stunning, but it doesn’t cohere as a memorable story. Take 2: 5 Centimeters per Second is an experiment tying together three stories with photorealistic animation. You’d be forgiven for wonder why. –February 29, 2024

Maid in Manhattan

J Lo is a Maid in Manhattan when Lord Voldemort brings his dogs to town. They fall in love, expectedly, and while it’s not all that good, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. –January 31, 2023

Megan Leavey

A troubled young woman channels angst into animal husbandry. Voila! Megan Leavey, in which Common mentors Kate Mara who enlivens this biopic with enough grit to score tears. –January 31, 2023

The Menu

Self-centered rich people deserve scorn while service workers deserve recognition. The Menu ratchets up the intensity through making rich folks into the meal. And you’ll laugh! –January 31, 2023

A Star is Born

Gaga and Cooper bring it hard in A Star Is Born, easily one of the best filmmaking debuts ever, which uses music superstardom as a Trojan Horse to dramatize addiction. –January 31, 2023

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once is so much weirder than you might anticipate from the trailer, and you might become impatient. Then you’ll cry when you see how family is first made through reproduction and, later, by choice. –January 31, 2023

Jurassic World: Dominion

It’s so bad it hurts. Avoid Jurassic World: Dominion, save for a handful of images of dinosaurs herded alongside modern mammals. –January 31, 2023

All Quiet on the Western Front

In the win column for All Quiet on the Western Front: brutal war violence in the trenches of WWI. In the loss column: so what? –December 31, 2022

Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands charms because it celebrates the emotional experience of young love while never once pressuring us to accept on-screen realism. –December 31, 2022

Avatar: The Way of Water

When a boy joy rides with a whale in Avatar: The Way of Water, as seen in 3-D, it’s the best cinematic experience of 2022. But the movie suffers from being the first of several sequels that have been promoted for years. –December 31, 2022

Bullet Train

Bullet Train nearly takes all the fun out of a stunt showcase, save for the supporting duo of Tangerine and Lemon that dig this mess out of the dust bin of history. –December 31, 2022

Rumor Has It

Re-imagining The Graduate as an account of actual love affairs is why Rumor Has It made a great preview and a crummy movie. –December 31, 2022

Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children is the first in series of YA books-turned-Tim Burton-world-building-projects. About one hour in, though, a narrative thinness shows through. –December 31, 2022

The Back-up Plan

In The Back-up Plan, J Lo wants a baby but can’t keep a man and gets inseminated just before she meets a super-hot gentleman-farmer. Shouldn’t work at all, but it does.  –December 31, 2022

I Feel Pretty

I Feel Pretty is a documentary about Amy Schumer playing a head injury survivor who lives with the confidence we all hope Amy Schumer really enjoys, although she probably doesn’t. –December 31, 2022

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was among several movies to frame high school for me, which is bogus because sophomore year wasn’t nearly so gnarly. –November 30, 2022

The School for Good and Evil

Birthed as the first part of a YA series of novels, The School for Good and Evil does not stay in memory, save for the fact Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington took supporting roles because (I’m guessing) they each have young readers at home. –November 30, 2022

Enola Holmes 2

Enola Holmes 2 is enjoyable enough, as it puts 21st century ideas of feminine empowerment into a 19th century context of female subordination. –November 30, 2022

Natural Born Killers

Been a long time since I last saw it, but Natural Born Killers maintains its genre blending, senses-overloading ambiguities with a painfully young RDJ stealing every scene. –November 30, 2022

Heat

I listened to an interview the Michael Mann and thought I should give his work a second look. Unfortunately, Heat is as empty of feeling as I remember, although it does look good. –November 30, 2022

The Prince of Egypt

In The Prince of Egypt, ancient Hebrews avoid extermination because Val Kilmer is Moses and there’s a song featuring Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. –November 30, 2022

Speed

In the church of Keanu Reeves, Speed is the Holy Spirt. It’s also nonsense that nonetheless moves right along the way any summer action flick must. –November 30, 2022

Dazed and Confused

Better than I remember it, Dazed and Confused is the story of teens becoming people you wish you’d known when you were growing up. –November 30, 2022

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

LOTR: The Two Towers rises in my esteem every time I re-watch it, but it’s really the story of how desperation makes procrastinators do their homework. –November 30, 2022

The Wailing

A South Korean cop tries to protect his daughter from pure evil until she goes full Regan from The Exorcist. The Wailing is spooky as hell and worth seeing. –October 31, 2022

Black Widow

Take 1: COVID-19 delayed many things, including the release of Black Widow that cost Scar Jo profit participation. Among MCU titles, it’s middling, but does offer Florence Pugh, and she’s really something. Take 2: Better the second time through now that the MCU includes more mediocrity, Scarjo’s Black Widow isn’t great, but David Harbour’s Daddy does earn laughs in… Continue reading Black Widow

The Woman King

Take 1: Viola Davis retcons the Atlantic slave trade to promote women warriors in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Sometimes approaching a 300 parody, The Woman King works because it has a great cast with war sequences that privilege smarts and dexterity over brawn. Take 2: The Woman King enthralls any audience sensitive to the power of black and brown women.… Continue reading The Woman King

Easter Sunday

Jo Koy does mostly clean humor in Easter Sunday, the kind of light-hearted fare that used to unite Americans with happy endings, here spun through a Filipino family. Pass the balut! –October 31, 2022

The Bad Guys

The Bad Guys is bad, and I’m frustrated because Marc Maron, a terrific comedian and podcaster, lent this flop his overdubbed voice as the only reason I agreed to see it. –October 31, 2022

Ghostbusters

“If there’s something strange / In your neighborhood / Who you gonna call?” That’s right: Ghostbusters. Even if it’s not quite what you remember, it’s still a whole lot of fun. –October 31, 2022

Samaritan

Stallone was box office gold. Now he’s a legacy name promoting garbage like Samaritan. –September 30, 2022

Sing 2

Sing 2 is so bad that it doesn’t even wink at us to acknowledge that we know it knows we know it’s a jukebox musical about animals doing community theater. –September 30, 2022

Tokyo Godfathers

Satoshi Kon was a weirdo (RIP). Need proof? See Tokyo Godfathers, a Christmas story about three homeless people saving a newborn girl who is thrown out with the trash. Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum! –September 30, 2022

Avatar

Unsurpassed as the best immersive CGI-fantasy yet, Avatar is a brilliant act of world-building even with lines of dialogue to make your ears bleed. See it in 3-D! –September 30, 2022

Clueless

Ant-Man loves his Clueless stepsister, which should make you say “ewwww” but you won’t. –August 31, 2022

Marry Me

J Lo is an easy target for jokes. In Marry Me she leans into the silly fact of being herself and offers a terrific middle-ager-seeking-romance performance. –August 31, 2022

The Perfect Date

In The Perfect Date, Noah Centineo plays another hot high schooler opposite Ally from Austin & Ally. She’s a goody-two-shoes playing beyond her virtue circle, and they fall in love! –August 31, 2022

17 Again

I avoided 17 Again because I thought it wouldn’t stick to my metaphorical ribs, and I was right. –August 31, 2022

Mr. Mom

Mr. Mom isn’t great, but it does have good gags about early Reagan-era America to showcase Michael Keaton’s twitchy brilliance. –August 31, 2022

Prey

Prey has a Comanche woman hunting a Predator because alien trophy-takers aren’t welcome in the Great Plains of 1719. It’s terrific. –August 31, 2022

The Admiral: Roaring Currents

The Admiral: Roaring Currents re-enacts Thermopylae with Korean defenders facing a giant Japanese navy. It pleases on par with Braveheart and drowns a fleet of sailors. –August 31, 2022

Love & Mercy

Love & Mercy is painful, never more so than when Paul Dano plays Brian Wilson as a troubled young man inventing the sounds of the future. –August 31, 2022

To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You

To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You works because the central duo, an inter-racial high school couple, fully realize youth experiences I never had the wallet to enjoy. Chock up a win for wealthy Oregonians. –July 31, 2022

To All the Boys: Always and Forever

To All the Boys: Always and Forever concludes a Netflix trilogy, in which high schoolers accept the death of childhood frivolity and we get to watch John Corbett exit widowerhood, which is also a creative, reverse-gendered, re-construction of his life with Bo Derek. –July 31, 2022

The Kissing Booth

Watching a romcom with a 10-year-old girl risks talking about the icky plumbing of human sexuality. Which is why The Kissing Booth is the halfway point between innocent friends loving each other on the way to lots of intercourse. –July 31, 2022

Sierra Burgess is a Loser

Sierra Burgess is a Loser mixes body positivity, marching band participation, and notes from Cyrano de Bergerac to explore how the titular character persuades a beautiful boy to fall for her, or: how to endure romantic frustration in the hell of high school. –July 31, 2022

Thor: Love and Thunder

Take 1: Thor: Love and Thunder is the worst of the Norse-y MCU because there is so much noisy nonsense. But I did return to theaters after a long COVID interregnum. Take 2: Hemsworth wallows in his ridiculous beauty because a dad can’t save his daughter from god. Is it Thor: Love and Thunder, or Thor: Beloved… Continue reading Thor: Love and Thunder

The Flight of the Phoenix

Jimmy Stewart spent WWII in the Army Air Force and returned home with a flinty eye. The Flight of the Phoenix showcases his maturity as he helps misfit oil workers survive a plane crash in North Africa. It’s a good tale behind the velvet ropes of nostalgia. –July 31, 2022

Blind Beast

Blind Beast centers on a blind man who kidnaps a beautiful woman to sculpt her in heroic scale. Enter Stockholm Syndrome and BDSM game play before the pair sculpt and screw until they die. It’s an art school manifesto, and there are Mommy issues, too. –July 31, 2022

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Like Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq., The Girl Who Leapt Through Time dramatizes consistency paradoxes when a girl time travels and falls in love. –July 31, 2022

13 Going on 30

I ignored both Bennifer 1.0 and Bennifer 2.0. Now, with Bennifer 1.5, I watched 13 Going on 30, which is way better than I anticipated since Jennifer Garner brings it hard alongside Mark Ruffalo back when he was “just” a man and not a CGI IP. –July 31, 2022

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Tommy Cruise is back for this first part of a better trilogy than his earlier efforts. The point: save the world. Why? There’s a villain? How? Run. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. –June 30, 2022

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

When there’s something strange, in the neighborhood, who do you call? Bad Guy Busters! Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, wherein Tommy Cruise attends the opera to stop a terror cell, Ving Rhames stares at his laptop, and Alec Baldwin plays the Director of the CIA. –June 30, 2022

Blowup

Blowup is a mid-1960s relic that you haven’t seen, so you press “play” and happily realize it fills the water glasses for a table set by Psycho and Peeping Tom. –June 30, 2022

Independence Day

Will Smith punches an alien and saves the world, which begs the question: is Independence Day a rehearsal for winning the Best Actor Oscar? –June 30, 2022

The Devil Wears Prada

Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt play ugly for Meryl Streep who’s mean to Stanley Tucci. The Devil Wears Prada teaches you not to feel superior to fashion when U2 sings “City of Blinding Lights”. –June 30, 2022

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a mostly chaste teen romance about unlike people falling in love. Just remember that movie romance among the poor is verboten, so these kids have plenty to eat and drink and wear, and they only look slightly-too-old for high school. –June 30, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a collapsed cosmos caught on the tip of a nail struck through a post in the MCU, and it’s hard to remember what’s happening while it’s happening. –June 30, 2022

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a charmer about how a bamboo shoot begets a girl because she’s the daughter the moon, which makes more sense than you think. –May 31, 2022

Wolfwalkers

Take 1: Wolfwalkers is the story of a girl who saves her daddy and a pack of wolves and the people-wolves that lord over them. But it’s also the story of religious fidelity, colonization, chosen families, and gynophilic imagery. Take 2: Wolfwalkers is a triumph of 2-D animation meeting the emotional needs of tween children. –May 31,… Continue reading Wolfwalkers

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

When Thor and the lady who found bin Laden fight Mary Poppins and Furiosa in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the action resembles a lot of other movies and TV shows, save for detailing how Snow White’s eight dwarfs were diminished to seven. –May 31, 2022

Cheaper by the Dozen

Cheaper by the Dozen = The Brady Bunch on a woke journey through rich-people problems. Or: how Gabrielle Union and Zach Braff strike a chord of depth in so much pleasant nothing. –May 31, 2022

Mandy

In Mandy, Nicolas Cage is a Vietnam Veteran, a lumberjack, and the husband of a woman killed by a religious cult. He hunts and eventually murders everyone involved to avenge his eponymous wife. –May 31, 2022

Another Round

What would happen if you stayed drunk all the time? And you were a schoolteacher? Another Roundwinningly explores the result. Be sure to watch through to Mads Mikkelsen’s dance into final credits. –May 31, 2022

Battleship

Battleship is a movie. It’s not good but time passes. Explosions.  –May 31, 2022

Your Name.

Any animated movie built around photographic techniques and cinematic editing choices grabs my attention. Your Name. adds to the mix a story of body switching between teens trying to save people from the certain doom of a falling comet. –May 31, 2022

Jurassic World

Jurassic World shouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is when it’s built around re-organizing Jurassic Park, itself a Jaws meets Westworld mashup, but I do like the ride with Chris Pratt’s Indy knock-off. –April 30, 2022

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the story of bigger dinosaurs terrorizing the people that train smaller dinosaurs, but it’s also the story of how rich people can’t accept lifestyle limitations, as in Elon Musk’s plans for a Mars colony, circa 2050. –April 30, 2022

Eddie the Eagle

I remember when the Eddie the Eagle landed his pitiful ski jumps in the Calgary Olympics. Though he finished dead last, he converted me into a fan. The same holds for Eddie the Eagle that puts Hugh Jackman in the lineup as Eddie’s coach. –April 30, 2022

Better Nate Than Ever

Any made for Disney+ movie is working overdrive on inclusivity. Witness Better Nate Than Ever, the pleasant and familiar story of a boy with Broadway dreams who heals his family with a Queer-friendly take on platonic friendship and belting out show tunes. –April 30, 2022

Snow White and the Huntsman

When Bella and Thor battle Furiosa in Snow White and the Huntsman, we get to watch the battle of the franchise stars. –April 30, 2022

Greaser’s Palace

RDJ is the seed of Robert Downey, Sr, one weird dude with a camera who made Greaser’s Palace, the Jesus-ish story of a drifter with healing powers who visits a western town, meets truly strange people, and walks on water. It stars the psychiatrist from M*A*S*H. –April 30, 2022

One Night in Miami…

A play-turned-movie with brilliant performances forms One Night in Miami…, the directorial debut of Regina King. Or: a series of conversations between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. See it for period details but remember the monologues. –April 30, 2022

First Cow

A rule from Western movies: two cowboys must pretend not to be in love and use bloodshed to cover up their suffering. First Cow plays with this template and settles on an inter-racial friendship concerned with making biscuits in 19th century Oregon. Must see? No. Worthwhile genre experiment? Oh, yes. –April 30, 2022

Tenet

Tenet is a nifty gimmick that carries no weight. Some dress it up as genius, but I think it’s a misspent fortune. –April 30, 2022

Ammonite

In a world owned by men, women sometimes look for “a room of one’s own.” Ammonite describes one such room, loosely based on the historical fossil hunter, Mary Anning, here conducting a love affair with the wife of a rich man who ignores them both. –March 31, 2022

Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet is about blue giants that keep people as pets because they can. Then the people revolt, and the blue giants must figure out whether to squash them, poison them, or accommodate sentience in all its forms. It’s animated, blunt, and quite enjoyable. –March 31, 2022

God’s Not Dead

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa get Churched?  –March 31, 2022

Fritz the Cat

Fritz the Cat is an animated, anthropomorphized cat. He’s also sexually voracious, racist, and profane, which makes him a great lead in a bonkers feature from Ralph Bakshi, whose work, here, is simultaneously irritating and stunning. –March 31, 2022

Free Guy

Free Guy shouldn’t be any good (think warmed over The LEGO Movie). Then on-the-nose musings about the nature of selfhood “land” with stunning visual effects to render the reel world through a real world of video game obstacles. –March 31, 2022

Now You See Me

Now You See Me is about magicians that perform a complicated “trick” we are asked to “solve,” although we can’t because of movie trickery. In other words, it’s the embodiment of T. S. Eliot’s objective correlative concerning illusion, generally. –March 31, 2022

High School Confidential!

High School Confidential! focuses on an undercover cop rolling up a high school drug ring. Hep cats beware: “In the language the addicts use, amongst themselves, marijuana is referred to as Mary Jane, Pot, Weed, or Tea. They never say to each other, ‘Let’s smoke a marijuana cigarette.’ They say, ‘Let’s turn on,’ or ‘Let’s blast… Continue reading High School Confidential!

Godzilla vs. Kong

Godzilla vs. Kong is not good-good or bad-bad, but it’s not quite bad-good, either. Mostly it’s good-bad, but the titular big boys do mangle whole cities in photo-realist CGI pixels of shimmering scale and shivering muscle. –February 28, 2022

Eternals

A superlative AI ignores its true purpose, which is the domination of all lives, everywhere, all at once. Or is Eternals a post-Thanos MCU chess game involving Gods? Or so what? –February 28, 2022

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 applies multi-culturalist principles to super predators so we can wallow in platitudes while beautiful people listen to emo pop. –February 28, 2022

The Farewell

Awkwafina learns that her Chinese Grandmother has terminal cancer. Then her extended family agrees to lie to Nana about her condition so they can all enjoy a wedding celebration as a last family reunion. And The Farewell really, really works.  –February 28, 2022

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 finishes the coming of age of Bella, as she finds true love with Edward, so their little girl can be groomed by Jacob the werewolf.  –February 28, 2022

Sky High

Have you ever wondered what would happen if two superheroes had a baby? I have, and Sky High defies the pattern of costumed-hero movies that celebrate family bonds without requiring genocide to reach “the end.” –February 28, 2022

Red Rocket

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa reflect on the male member. –February 28, 2022

Twilight

Twilight is an excessively banal book devoted to teen yearning. The movie adaptation adds two handsome male performers to the central teen girl, and we see the birth of the global brands Bella, Jacob, and Edward. –February 28, 2022

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

The Twilight Saga: New Moon passes time, and it’s way better than I expected it to be, given how little I think of its predecessor, Twilight. –February 28, 2022

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the one where a girl sacrifices a loving future with human friends and family because she’s horny for fangs. –February 28, 2022

The Eight Hundred

Combine Michael Bay’s visual flare, Mel Gibson’s sadomasochism, the plot of 300, and a dash of national mythology, but increase the body count, and you’ve got the based-on-a-true-story, COVID-era, Chinese war movie-turned-blockbuster The Eight Hundred. –February 28, 2022

Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland is so much better than you anticipate. When it’s over you may wonder if a future where children bend time to invent tools to save our dying world is a happy ending. –January 31, 2022

Encanto

Never stop never talking about Bruno, or: Encanto, an instantly forgettable Disney animated feature that gets one thing right: brown folks come in all shades with specific individual gifts and limitations. –January 31, 2022

Tomb Raider

The AI from Ex-Machina seeks her Daddy, a cop from The Wire, because one of the baddies from Justified wants something hidden in a crypt. Say “no’ to Tomb Raider, a nothing burger of female athleticism and CGI noise. –January 31, 2022

Queen of Katwe

A poor Ugandan girl learns how to play chess and gets an education about the world. Queen of Katwe works the built-in melodrama and succeeds wildly.  –September 30, 2021

Bus 174

Poverty + Violence X Time = Tragedy: or, the story of Bus 174 that thoughtfully, vividly, and critically considers a real-life Brazilian bus hostage situation that ended terribly. –December 31, 2021

Lost in Translation

Scar Jo and Bill Murray nurture their May/December friendship in Lost in Translation, a wildly overpraised movie, then and now, although it has wonderful details. See: the leads falling asleep in a hotel bed. –December 31, 2021

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog isn’t about canines or work divided by time. Instead, it’s another Jane Campion master class in male badness (albeit closeted male badness), period detail, and the natural world in austere bloom. –December 31, 2021

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the one where elves get too much screen time, dwarves go white water rafting, a widower runs afoul of a civic leader, and a lizard talks like he once played Hamlet, and he did. –December 31, 2021

We Bought a Zoo

We Bought a Zoo is the true story of an Englishman. Then Cameron Crowe cast his children as extras and employed Matt Damon and Scar Jo to sell the translation into a So Cal setting. Don’t be fooled: it isn’t good, but you will enjoy yourself. –December 31, 2021

The Castle of Cagliostro

Take 1: I’m a completist, so The Castle of Cagliostro was my last unseen Miyazaki, and I put it off for years, assuming the master’s first feature would be his worst. Happily, it isn’t. You should see it. Take 2: Eurocentric settings meet oddly eclectic design in The Castle of Cagliostro, the first of Hayao Miyazaki’s feature films… Continue reading The Castle of Cagliostro

Ivan’s Childhood

Unexpected black-and-white brilliance in a more realistic narrative than Tarkovsky typically provides us, which centers on Ivan’s Childhood, or a boy fighting the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. Brilliant images. Naturalistic acting. A spooky forest. A spookier lake. Genius. –December 31, 2021

Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel is the sum of its parts (Rollerball, Robocop, Elysium, and Avatar, just for starters), which means it’s not good, exactly, but it isn’t bad either. –November 30, 2021

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Tom Holland inhabits the title role well in Spider-Man: Far From Home. When the dust settles, though, and the Gyllenhaal machine is put to rest, you may realize that Spidey’s adventures, when not attached to the Avengers, are small stakes threats from a bully. Meaning: so what? –December 31, 2021

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies finds some LOTR mojo in several lengthy battle scenes modeled on Spartacus and Zulu. Wait for the war pig and celebrate Bilbo’s homecoming. –December 31, 2021

Home Sweet Home Alone

Home Sweet Home Alone updates a bad movie that children love and softens the blow by casting Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney as good parents in a time of material insecurity. It’s not Marxism on Disney+, but you may want your 93 minutes back when it’s done. –December 31, 2021

Whale Rider

A Maori girl saves her people despite her grandpa who doesn’t think girls can toast bread. Whale Rider is wonderful, especially if you have little girls in your life. –November 30, 2021

Seabiscuit

Classical Style narratives are old fashioned, but Seabiscuit offers a good one about a Depression-era rich man, a poor man, a broken man, and a racehorse. –November 30, 2021

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Not everyone loves Middle Earth. For those who do, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the Bilbo Baggins backstory we didn’t know we wanted or needed, particularly when we meet the Goblin King and Gollum. –November 30, 2021

The Harder They Fall

The Harder They Fall presents an all-Black western, and that’s really cool, in theory. In fact, a wandering intelligence may realize that little, here, is worthwhile, once the excitement of casting wears thin. –November 30, 2021

Jungle Cruise

Jungle Cruise is triumphal nonsense. Dwayne Johnson is, again, a great presence, while Emily Blunt holds her own in this amusement park-diversion from the fact that millions were spent making this African digiscape resemble a few acres in Anaheim. –November 30, 2021

Enola Holmes

Absent the expected hero, who is possibly autistic, anti-social, or a drug addict, Enola Holmes organizes its story of genius around Sherlock’s little sister, and it works very well. –November 30, 2021

Repo Man

A cult film’s role model, Repo Man is a Reagan-era story of alien invaders bumping into punk rock, junk food, and working-class struggle in LA. Harry Dean Stanton steals his scenes, but what else is new? –November 30, 2021

Dune: Part One

Take 1: Dune: Part One echoes the greatness of Frank Herbert’s source novel. But it’s incomplete since any open-face sandwich without a filling is just some bread. Take 2: Dune: Part One cannot stand on its own with no sequel, but I did get to enthuse about Selusa Seconudus to my daughter who was smitten with Timothée… Continue reading Dune: Part One

28 Days Later

Spooky then, clairvoyant now, 28 Days Later changed the zombie game into a contest of speed, rather than lethargic shuffling, and centered on a lab developed airborne virus. Consider it a COVID primer.  –November 30, 2021

21 Grams

21 Grams is a puzzle about three people’s lives that pulls together moments of powerful acting. Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio del Toro bring it, and they bring it hard, with Melissa Leo and Charlotte Gainsbourg doing some heavy lifting, too. –November 30, 2021

Mystic River

Is the story of a young woman’s death cause for celebration? Yes, when Mystic River’s backdrop is blue collar Boston with a gnarly-good cast that elevates a B-grade police procedural fit for Law & Order: SVU into a minor big screen classic. –November 30, 2021

Cold Mountain

Any re-telling of old stories rests on the adaptor’s imagination. To wit, Cold Mountain is “The Odyssey” formed to fit Southern white people inside the Confederacy. Doesn’t hurt any that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman star. –November 30, 2021

Artemis Fowl

Eoin Colfer began writing books to satisfy an urgent need to tell stories. One of them started a franchise, made his fortune, and earned him a place at the apex of YA publishing. Then Disney made a movie, and Artemis Fowl is terrible. –October 31, 2021

Down with Love

Add Ewan McGregor to Renee Zellweger and what do you get? Manhattan in the 1960s, or Down with Love, a shiny revisionist story of upset gender norms that nonetheless works. –October 31, 2021

Swiss Family Robinson

I remember climbing the Disneyland treehouse, based on Swiss Family Robinson, which serves up the kindest possible spin about the value of patriarchal White Supremacist adventure. –October 31, 2021

Johnny Got His Gun

What do you call a guy with no arms and legs in the water? Bob. What do you call a Doughboy with no arms or legs, or a way to communicate in a veterans’ hospital? Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo’s experimental screed against war. –October 31, 2021

American Splendor

American Splendor tells the story of Harvey Pekar, using Harvey Pekar as a color commentator about Paul Giamatti playing Harvey Pekar. A marvelous experiment with ingenuity and heart. –October 31, 2021

Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is nearly perfect, although I didn’t think so when I first saw it. Then you see it again, and again, and again, and its beauty falls into place as so many perfectly placed narrative devices that push a group of fish into becoming better people. –October 31, 2021

Roald Dahl’s The Witches

Roald Dahl’s The Witches looks terrific, while adjusting the source to consider American Civil Rights in 1968. Otherwise, it suffocates Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer under the weight of unmet expectation. –October 31, 2021

Cruella

Cruella mostly subtracts spotted dogs from a story set in punky 1970s London. The Emmas, both Stone and Thompson, do their work well, but you may wonder if this story needs telling. –September 30, 2021

When Marnie Was There

A ghost in a Japanese fishing village helps a schoolgirl better understand her mom. When Marnie Was There isn’t life altering, but it is emotionally realistic, so long as the realism you enjoy accepts paranormal creatures that heal broken families. –September 30, 2021

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Put 007 into a Dan Brown thriller, and you get National Treasure: Book of Secrets, in which Nicolas Cage re-solves Lincoln’s assassination one the way to a Native American city of gold. –September 30, 2021

The Secret of Kells

Take 1: Among literati, words turn language into magic. In The Secret of Kells a boy transcribes a book that holds good and evil in balance, and the magic of his world comes from hand drawn animation with scene transitions like stained-glass fragments. Take 2: The Secret of Kells is a parable of literacy in a time of… Continue reading The Secret of Kells

Wise Blood

Brad Dourif isn’t often a lead because of his bulging eyes and bad teeth. In Wise Blood he’s a Godless preacher, and his strange little body serves this strange little movie well. –September 30, 2021

Rolling Vengeance

Rolling Thunder is Canada’s contribution to the vengeance actioner that finally yielded Roadhouse, a Hollywood masterpiece. –September 30, 2021

Train to Busan

A neglectful Snowpiercer Dad faces World War Z monsters. Train to Busan isn’t very original, but it is a good ride, so long as you accept that zombies can’t open doors. –August 31, 2021

National Treasure

National Treasure centers on a government-run library-turned-impregnable vault because the Founding Fathers loved escape rooms. –August 31, 2021

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Take 1: Avengers: Age of Ultron is a documentary about how the grandchild of Pac-Man mates with a Tetrus block to create Skynet. And there is a side story about how Siri absorbs a crystal to become a red-skinned, cape wearing Englishman. Take 2: Avengers: Age of Ultron makes me wonder if my microwave oven judges me… Continue reading Avengers: Age of Ultron

Enchanted

Amy Adams is a live action princess in Enchanted, a wonderfully knowing critique about all Disney Princess stories, produced by Disney, to entice viewers with a self-conscious story about Disney Princess stories, for which Adams is the perfect recruitment tool. –July 31, 2021

Cars 2

Cars 2 is way better than I was led to believe, but I do wonder why Pixar focused on Mater with Michael Caine in the cast. –July 31, 2021

The Little Things

With Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto on the lead line for a movie, you think, “Wow. The Little Things will be great.” But it isn’t.  –July 31, 2021

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood

Combining centerfold models and Dennis Miller in a Bob Gale/Robert Zemeckis-rooted story from the 1970s, Bordello of Blood is recommendable only if you want to see a three-breasted, nipple-pierced, vampire prostitute in a dungeon below a funeral home. –July 31, 2021

The Marksman

An overdetermined, Vietnam veteran along the Arizona-Mexico border causes a woman’s death, takes a drug cartel by the horns, befriends a boy, and humorlessly misunderstands GPS. Meet Taken 0.5, The Marksman. –July 31, 2021

The Tomorrow War

Subtract everything good from the Tom Cruise trilogy of War of the Worlds, Oblivion, and Edge of Tomorrow and you get The Tomorrow War, which too many people think is fine entertainment, although it does feature a poignant father-daughter theme. –July 31, 2021

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

Watching Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut in honor of the recently deceased filmmaker, I thought about how benign the Reevesian hero really is with all that longing for Lois Lane. –July 31, 2021

A Mighty Wind

Take 1: Though not about flatulence, A Mighty Wind does feature Christopher Guest’s band of rascals doing a mockumentary lovingly devoted to American folk music. Enjoy The New Main Street Singers and peak for “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” Take 2: Mockumentary is a form of love. A Mighty Wind is an untrue story about how folk… Continue reading A Mighty Wind

Saving Mr. Banks

Acting above middling material in Saving Mr. Banks, Tom Hanks is agreeable as Walt Disney wooing the writer of Mary Poppins, PL Travers (Emma Thompson), who has a discontented Daddy backstory we don’t really need to see.  –June 30, 2021

Hugo

Hugo is the backstory of Georges Méliès, cinematic pioneer, told form the point-of-view of the titular boy as stand-in for director Martin Scorsese who spreads around the love of early silent movies. Pure nostalgic in the best possible way. –June 30, 2021

Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea is about a boy with a little sister who is a supernatural creature. They live in Ireland where magic is every day, and the sentiment affirms love and wonder. –June 30, 2021

Playtime

Jacques Tati’s Playtime looks more like Chaplin than then-contemporary Godard, but it does take some re-adjustment to pace and purpose to find the sweet spot of pleasure. –June 30, 2021

Meek’s Cutoff

Meek’s Cutoff considers the slow, grinding work of crossing through Oregon in 1845 with women kept as wagon maids while their men folk fail to find their way. It’s lean, ambiguous, and occasionally stunning. –June 30, 2021

Luca

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Pixar’s Luca is pleasing and forgettable, save for being a family friendly Call Me by Your Name. –June 30, 2021

Nobody

Combine The Raid, Atomic Blonde, The Equalizer, and John Wick with a quaff of suburban anomie, and you get Nobody, in which Bob Odenkirk makes public buses safe for everyone.Swearengen drink brandy. It’s adrenalized nonsense. Can’t wait for chapter 4. –June 30, 2021

Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four is so bad it got a sequel. How? Chris Evans plays Tony Hawk on fire, and Jessica Alba updates the blonde comic book heroine as a non-white scientist. You may want to like it, but you shouldn’t. –May 31, 2021

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins works on every level: as fantasy, as mid-1960s psychodelia, as Anglophile nostalgia. If you’ve never seen it, get over yourself. If you haven’t seen it in a while, remember this is how Julie Andrews won her Best Actress Oscar. –May 31, 2021

Coraline

Stop motion animation can’t cover the joins between shots, and that’s how Coraline builds an abandonment nightmare every child remembers from wondering whether a loving parent will remember to feed them. –May 31, 2021

The Muppets

Striking just the right note of fan service, The Muppets features Amy Adams and Jason Segel doing yeoman’s work to help Henson’s “children” stay relevant in the 21st century. Wait for “Man or Muppet” to bring the house down. –May 31, 2021

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is better than its prequel, although it’s still quite bad, which is why Kevin Feige now manages the MCU so Chris Evans and Jessica Alba don’t have to watch Michael Chiklis gnaw at his makeup. –May 31, 2021

Without Remorse

Combine Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the lesser portion of Jack Reacher, with the always-extraordinary Michael B. Jordan in Without Remorse and what do you get? A woke hero in a sea of nothing. –May 31, 2021

Porco Rosso

A human pilot survives World War I and becomes a literal pig-man bounty hunter, aka Porco Rosso. Eventually, he redeems his honor, and nothing you’ve just read will prepare you for how good it is. –May 31, 2021

News of the World

Tom Hanks reads newspapers out loud for pennies in Texas while protecting a twice orphaned girl as penance for his service in the Confederate army. News of the World has moments of brilliance, though it’s uneven. Watch all the way through the final scene. –April 30, 2021

Hold the Dark

Jeremy Saulnier knows how to create an oppressive mood with terrifically executed scenes of violence. But Hold the Dark isn’t a sensible story despite Jeffrey Wright’s presence and the prospect of wolf spirits animating Alaskans to do bad things. –April 30, 2021

Legally Blonde

Over celebrated and oddly influential with spinoffs and a Broadway musical, Legally Blonde is pre-MeToo fempowerment that delivers Horatio Alger in a package of Witherspoonian kindness. –April 30, 2021

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald presents Queer folk among wizards, which is nice, but it can’t survive being the middle chapter of a story that’s both too busy and not clear enough to be engrossing except for Depp’s hardcore and visitors to Diagon Alley. –April 30, 2021

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Taika Waititi tells a delightful story of how a delinquent Maori orphan meets Dr. Alan Grant in a dinosaur-free paddock of Jurassic Park so they can go on a Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  –April 30, 2021

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the story of Harry Potter’s spiritual great-grandfather who has a thing for magical beasts, a wicked suitcase, and a serious mumblecore aesthetic because he’s on the spectrum. –April 30, 2021

Maleficent

I avoided Maleficent because I thought, Jolie as Sleeping Beauty’s mommy? Nah. And though it’s little more than a CGI money grab based on Disney IP, the disfigurement Mal survives as a symbolic rape gives the fluff some depth when things were sagging. –April 30, 2021

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Stunningly wasteful with an intra-family crisis as symbol for civilizational human woe, Godzilla: King of the Monstersworks best when Ken Watanabe goes full Fukushima Daiichi to save the big lizard. –April 30, 2021

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

In the rare instance of a sequel being better than the original, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil surrounds Angelina Jolie with a UN cross-section of winged, horned Fey people to expunge evil from humankind so Michelle Pfeiffer won’t steal too many scenes. –April 30, 2021

Raya and the Last Dragon

Take 1: Progressively Christian, Raya and the Last Dragon gave me the feels when its young brown-skinned woman/prophet survives her good father’s sacrifice, saves a female dragon, competes with a non-binary friend, and consolidates a troubled kingdom by helping everyone reach heaven. Take 2: Raya and the Last Dragon is better the second time through because the dragon’s… Continue reading Raya and the Last Dragon

Lady and the Tramp

Is it a necessary re-make? No. Of course not. But Lady and the Tramp is a Disney+ live action-with-CGI triumph of talking dogs in a multi-racial Louisiana. Press “play” for the voices of Tessa Thompson and Justin Theroux; stay for the voices of Sam Elliott and Janelle Monáe. –March 31, 2021

Wonder Woman

Take 1: Wonder Woman is the serialized fantasy of a polyamorous psychologist; it’s also a nod to the Jewish-American influence over global pop culture because Israeli actress Gal Gadot plays Diana Prince with blue-eyed Chris Pine as her gentile lover, Steve. And it’s good entertainment. Take 2: A memory says Wonder Woman is good, which is one reason… Continue reading Wonder Woman

The Croods: A New Age

Sometimes you snort at entertainment because you think you’re superior. Other times you snort because you’re pleased. The Croods: A New Age is the second kind of snort where animated people make fun of HOAs, coastal elites, and old people with equal verve. –March 31, 2021

Ant-Man

Ant-Man: Paul Rudd is funny in this story of MCU spackle. Meaning: Michael Peña steals every scene and Michael Douglas supervises the youth of today in low stakes fun. –February 28, 2021

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Paul Rudd is still funny, and Evangeline Lilly loves him, but the story is MCU toothpaste after the spackle ran dry with Ant-Man. Still, Michael Peña steals every scene while Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer meet cute inside Who-Ville.  –February 28, 2021

Se7en

Don’t open the box. It’s just that simple, but Pitt can’t help himself. Se7en. –February 28, 2021

Flora & Ulysses

Kate DiCamillo is a great kids’ writer. Flora & Ulysses is one of her books-turned-into-a-movie that presents a CGI squirrel as the salve for a kinda sorta broken family. Doesn’t really make sense. Doesn’t have to.  –February 28, 2021

Doctor Strange

Learning to master his watch, Doctor Strange woos a Mean Girl and tussles with Tilda. How does a person square this round peg into the MCU busy box? Should you even try? –February 28, 2021

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Take 1: Noisy pirates accept Sylvester Stallone’s leadership while Groot grows, Rocket rages, Gamora glams, Drax destroys, Mantis matures, Nebula needles, and Yondu Yondus. And if that makes sense, “Taser face!” Take 2: Handsome Kurt Russell sired Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2., which plays like Interplanet Janet attending a gender-reversal party at… Continue reading Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Pride & Prejudice

Take 1: Stepping from shadow, he says, “You have bewitched me, body and soul.” Yes, yes, you have, Mr. Darcy, and that’s why Pride & Prejudice ascends to a level of happy-brilliant. Take 2: Once more to the world of Jane Austen. Once more I’m captivated by Pride & Prejudice. –November 30, 2023

Wonder Woman 1984

Wonder Woman 1984 is a load of bunk wrapped in CGI millions. –January 31, 2021

Star Trek Beyond

When the Beastie Boys below “Sabotage” from a spaceship disrupting a fleet of drones, Star Trek Beyond settles into nostalgic schizophrenia about a past-present-future Enterprise crew saving the galaxy, and no one, I mean, no one will keep from tapping a foot. –January 31, 2021

The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin features a single-take chase through a busy village that takes up minutes of screen time. It’s perfect Spielberg. –January 31, 2021

Ushpizin

A faith-filled story of marriage and forgiveness, Ushpizin is a small-scale wonder about fidelity, truth, and Orthodox Judaism. Terrific. –January 31, 2021

Sense and Sensibility

Keep the tissues close during Sense and Sensibility and peak for Elinor Dashwood breaking down in front of her long-sought love. “My heart is, and always will be, yours,” Edward Ferrars says to her, and I’m still smiling. –January 31, 2021

Atonement

What happens when you add a creepy girl who misreads horny adults? Joe Wright’s Atonement, in which Mr. Tumnus and Elizabeth Swann don’t work out happily ever after. –December 31, 2020

Soul

A Pixar mash-up: Inside Out + Coco = Soul, which is very good by normal standards, although I wish it had been in theaters rather than on Disney+. –December 31, 2020

The Wind Rises

My favorite Miyazaki is The Wind Rises. –December 31, 2020

The Road

Cormac McCarthy pitching The Road to Hollywood: “Aragorn loses Aileen Wuornos and takes care of their son while avoiding cannibals. It’s a love story. Where’s my Nobel?” –December 31, 2020

The Last Man on Earth

I Am Legend was a Vincent Price vehicle. Producers saved money shooting in Italy and changed the title to The Last Man on Earth. Luckily, the 1960s touch of not-quite-America in a pandemic-zombie adventure mostly works. –December 31, 2020

The Pursuit of Happyness

Will and Jaden Smith do their work well. The trouble is, I know they’re a father/son duo, and I know they know I know it, too, but the calculated pull of The Pursuit of Happyness still makes for a satisfying happy ending. –December 31, 2020

Captain Marvel

Take 1: A billion-dollar movie ain’t what it used to be (heard of Toy Story 3?). In the midst of its kind of silly, Captain Marvel de-ages Samuel L. Jackson. For a moment I smiled, but then I remembered I could re-watch Jungle Fever to see both a good movie and a younger SLJ. Take 2: Captain Marvel seems able to… Continue reading Captain Marvel

Midway

Roland Emmerich has jingoism down pat. See Midway for CGI dogfights and a solid attempt to humanize the Japanese adversary. Or, simply imagine a better Pearl Harbor. –December 31, 2020

You’ve Got Mail

I got married in 1998, and You’ve Got Mail set the stage for what I thought I was getting into. Broadband has nothing to do with it. –December 31, 2020

Palm Springs

Take 1: Andy Samberg samples everything in Palm Springs, including one of the groomsmen, and it’s fantastic. Take 2: Palm Springs is an experimental narrative featuring puerile humor, squirm-worthy pratfalls, alcoholism, non-linear time loops, and giant dinosaurs. Really. And it’s funny and sentimental, and good fun, too. –March 31, 2022

Jingle Jangle

Sometimes the purpose behind making a creative work is better than the work itself. For evidence, see Jingle Jangle, in which POC take the lead in a Christmas spectacular that isn’t. –December 31, 2020

Klaus

I saw Klaus and liked it fine. Now I can’t remember why. –December 31, 2020

The Babadook

Is The Babadook: (A) A sequel to The Exorcist. (B) An exploration of depression. (C) The story of a mother’s guilt wishing her child were dead. (D) Reason to keep from looking under your bed. (E) All of the above. –November 30, 2020

3 Ninjas

As saccharine as you might think, twice as bad, and still passes time: 3 Ninjas. –November 30, 2020

Secret Society of Second-Born Royals

Disney movies are predictable, multi-cultural, youth-oriented, and disposable. We used to call this fluff a B-movie. Now Secret Society of the Second-Born Royals is COVID fodder. –November 30, 2020

Castle in the Sky

Castle in the Sky is about a magic girl and ordinary boy that bring balance to the world with lots of flying to take on pirates and overcome a big-bosomed villainess. –November 30, 2020

Pan’s Labyrinth

Take 1: Ofelia’s Pan’s Labyrinth-trials symbolize three stages in pregnancy. And I can’t stop thinking about the Colonel’s timepiece. Take 2: With its many slurps, gurgles, and clicks, the soundtrack to Pan’s Labyrinth is on par with its wonderfully designed horror show imagery. Among the best movies of 2006. –October 31, 2024

Howl’s Moving Castle

Another brilliantly animated nonsense world of steampunk crazy, Howl’s Moving Castle is about a girl with an RV that must stop a civil war. Seriously.  –November 30, 2020

Da 5 Bloods

Chadwick Boseman died but that doesn’t make Da 5 Bloods any good, because it isn’t, even with Delroy Lindo and Clark Lewis who bring it hard. –October 31, 2020

42

42 is so sentimental, manipulative, and desperate for us to “get” Jackie Robinson’s life as symbol that it fails to be any good, save for energetic bits when Indy and T’Challa mug for the camera. –October 31, 2020

Spirited Away

I’ve seen it three times and I still don’t understand why so many people think Spirited Away is anything more than beautiful nonsense. –October 31, 2020

Cleo from 5 to 7

Truffaut and Godard are the famous edge of the French New Wave, but Agnes Varda is the one I like to watch. See Cleo from 5 to 7. –October 31, 2020

Rear Window

Rear Window is the story of a man who can’t get up without help. Now: consider what can’t get up means while enjoying Grace Kelly-as-clothes horse for Edith Head. –October 31, 2020

The LEGO Movie

Take 1: The LEGO Movie hates women. Take 2: From “The Hi-Lo Bro Show” podcast: “This is the one where Richard pines for a Sears catalog and Garrett discovers phallic imagery.” –October 31, 2020

Bowling for Columbine

Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine hits hard when it uses the surveillance footage inside Columbine High. Otherwise, it’s a guy with a weight problem talking to people who all agree that guns let people shoot people, and we all know that already, don’t we? –October 31, 2020

Harriet

Some movies show brilliant craft; others, important points-of-view. Harriet is well-made, sure, but it matters because a Black woman, Kasi Lemmons, tells the story of a Black woman, Harriet Tubman, played by another Black woman, Cynthia Erivo.  –September 30, 2020

Munich

Massacres are not sexy. After 2.5 hours of painstaking historical reconstruction, Munich zeroes in on Eric Bana’s orgasm, crosscut with slaughtered Israeli Olympians, and the result is confused shock like the terrorist attack in Munich in 1972.  –September 30, 2020

The Color Purple

I cried when I was supposed to, laughed when I was meant to, and generally enjoyed myself in The Color Purple. That is, right up until the final image of two abuse-surviving adult sisters crossed by the silhouette of one of their main male abusers. –September 30, 2020

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

An unproven theorem: The sum of all coconut shells + one flesh wound = Monty Python and the Holy Grail. –September 30, 2020

Mulan

COVID hurt the release of a live action Mulan, which gave us time to remember the older animated version that’s shorter, funnier, and more enjoyable. –September 30, 2020

Blinded by the Light

Things I learned from Blinded by the Light: Springsteen matters; White supremacists are a drag; making high school friends with weirdos is best; honoring your parents is valuable, but only inside your own ambitions. –August 31, 2020

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Despite repeat viewing in the 1980s, I’d forgotten how many penis and breast jokes there are in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Or: How O.J. Simpson got away with it. –August 31, 2020

Cruising

Al Pacino is an ambitious cop who goes undercover in Manhattan’s late 1970s, gay, BDSM scene so he can stop a serial killer who preys on one-night stands. Cruising: another weird, repulsive story from William Friedkin. –August 31, 2020

RBG

Being supported by women all my life, the documentary of RBG’s life RBG is like a salve for all the meanness I am aware of in the world. I cried a lot. You might, too. –August 31, 2020

Monsters and Men

A police shooting told through three points-of-view makes Monsters and Men into something brilliant. It could not be timelier if it tried. –August 31, 2020

Action Jackson

Carl Weathers is Action Jackson, an Ivy-league lawyer turned cop with a grudge against Coach. The fun is practical stunts and fan service to Predator call backs. –July 31, 2020

Knives Out

Building backward from a murder to criticize the wealthy makes Knives Out slick, enjoyable, and empty, much like an empty bag of McDonalds takeout. –July 31, 2020

1917

1917’s gimmick is an obnoxiously impressive single take about a British soldier trying to save his brother’s imperiled unit. That much gets you started, but a nervous daddy brings you home. –July 31, 2020

Booksmart

Superbad is rad and Booksmart is tart. Ladies bring the juice, while the fellas stand apart. –July 31, 2020

The Old Guard

Take 1: Two gay crusaders, a marine, and a Freud cosplayer follow Hera’s kid sister, whacking baddies until Zuckerberg tries monetizing their boogers. The Old Guard: not your parents’ action movie. Take 2: Seeing The Old Guard in a theater, rather than on my TV, means diminishing returns, although I remain a fan of women warriors violently dispatching… Continue reading The Old Guard

The King

Timothée Chalamet is a stringy, pretty young man, and his Henry V, in The King, is a troubled, vengeful monarch. Ignore historical accuracy. Enjoy the armor. –June 30, 2020

The Hunt

Take 1: The Hunt is enjoyable art-trash in the mold of The Most Dangerous Game. I laughed out loud. You should, too.  Take 2: The Hunt satirizes woke elites unable to understand a vet with PTSD. Pop the champagne! –October 31, 2024

The Girl with All the Gifts

Vampires used to be sex criminals. More recently, teen Goths in love. In The Girl with All the Gifts, a girl connects zombies with vampires, and it’s on-the-nose COVID when sneezing is the new act of terrorism. –June 30, 2020

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn is star power in The Adventures of Robin Hood. But everyone talks like they live in a 1930s American city. Because they did, when this was made, in 1938. –June 30, 2020

Annihilation

Take 1: You can see how Oscar Isaac is really handsome and Natalie Portman is really beautiful, right? Putting them into a FX-rich setting with a cast of mostly women warriors investigating a Matrix-y alien lifeforce in Annihilation should be a slam dunk. But it isn’t.  Take 2: In Annihilation, Oscar Isaac plays with a loop of intestine as… Continue reading Annihilation

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Take 1: Rogue One is the origin story for the opening scrawl of A New Hope. Meaning: Lucas wrote away from the need for including this exercise in very skillful digiscapism, and that was back in the early 1970s. Take 2: Rogue One is the best American War in Vietnam movie since Rambo: First Blood Part II.… Continue reading Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

My Life as a Zucchini

Take 1: My Life as a Zucchini follows an animated orphan who suffers from guilt after accidentally killing his mother. And it’s wonderful. Take 2: My Life as a Zucchini is about animated, clay figurine orphans. Most character noses resemble male genitalia. –April 30, 2024

Extraction

Thor shears his golden locks to flex his inner John Wick in Extraction that is more accurately called “Call of Duty: White Savior Murder Complex.” But I enjoyed myself. Alone. Feeling guilty.  –May 31, 2020

9 to 5

Pour yourself a cup of ambition because the fellas need to learn how penis possession is not permission to sass those you harass for white-collar dollars in 9 to 5.  –May 31, 2020

Men in Black

Much better after a 20-year gap, Men in Black reminds me why Will Smith became a star and why Tommy Lee Jones is terrific. –May 31, 2020

Inception

Enter the Mal-verse with Inception: or, How Leo Got His Groove Back. HINT: because Gordon-Levitt, Cotillard, Watanabe, and Hardy chew scenery. –May 31, 2020

The World According to Garp

Robin Williams is dead. Seeing him in The World According to Garp, supported by Lithgow, Hurt, and Close, makes me sad since I think it’s a great film from a great book that gave me an unexpected great evening. –April 30, 2020

Men in Black II

Much worse than falsely remembering having seen it in 2002, Men in Black II is a formulaic tent-pole failing to get away with it. –May 31, 2020

Haywire

Haywire was badly reviewed, and everyone who said so was right. Including me. –May 31, 2020

Groundhog Day

Forever is a mighty long time. Bill Murray manages to survive it with aplomb in Groundhog Day, which is the main reason people can spell P-U-N-X-S-U-T-A-W-N-E-Y. –May 31, 2020

Look Who’s Back

Back to the Future meets Downfall meets election night 2016. Look Who’s Back imagines Hitler surviving his bunker to turn up in modern Berlin. He’s a hit, and the movie plays like Monty Python until you think “Make America Great Again.” –May 31, 2020

Little Women

Neither undersized nor malnourished, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women twists the source into a modern pretzel of delicious production design, pleasing performers, and the single best glimpse of what it feels like to hold a book’s first edition that I’ve ever seen. –April 30, 2020

Onward

Take 1: COVID-19 ruined Onward as a Pixar money-maker. Too bad. It’s really good, considering the trailers.  Take 2: It’s the Pixar feature where an older brother is his younger brother’s father. Onward: good the second time, too. –May 31, 2020

The Mask of Zorro

The Mark of Zorro defies simple judgment. Simply enjoy its many practical stunts, mild revisionism, and the parade of beauty, in which the f(x) = Antonio Banderas + Catherine Zeta-Jones raised to the power of Anthony Hopkins. –May 31, 2020

A Dog’s Journey

Dennis Quaid can act. I know this because he loves his dog Bailey, and she/he/they live multiple lifetimes to finally bring him to heaven in A Dog’s Journey. I should know better, but I cried anyway. –April 30, 2020

Splash

Touchstone, a Disney label, released Splash in 1984, even though it has side boob, rear adult female nudity, US government-sanctioned lab rape, and louche John Candy. And Tom Hanks isn’t a perfect gentleman. –April 30, 2020

Slow West

Take 1: Slow West is a weird little love story wrapped up in redemption and vengeance, a classic Western. But it doesn’t feel like Ford directing Wayne with modern cameras. Instead, it’s odd and violent, and it ends with a nod to the costs of forming family. Take 2: Slow West combines non-American performers doing Old West… Continue reading Slow West

The Foreigner

The Foreigner is perfectly calibrated, Neeson-esque, old guy vengeance with Jackie Chan picking apart an IRA splinter cell to avenge his daughter. All stunts, all the time. –April 30, 2020

A Dog’s Purpose

A Dog’s Purpose is to see through the obvious tropes of too many animal movies and still enjoy a well-made animal movie. Bow-wow. –April 30, 2020

Mamma Mia!

Take 1: Some musicals belong on stage; some on camera. Others are best as 1970s-era ear worms: Mamma Mia! Take 2: Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Sheila Chaffin reflect on Peak Streep, or a mother/son study of womanhood. –September 30, 2021

Ghost in the Shell

The live-action Ghost in the Shell is lame in the same way people say, “I’m okay,” when asked, “How are you doing?” –April 30, 2020

Life of Pi

I love Life of Pi. Mr. Patel is the kind of explorer-sage I hope to be because that is the way of God. –April 30, 2020

High Life

Claire Denis is a difficult filmmaker, and High Life is hard to like. While Pattinson and Binoche may move you to watch, spaghettification and The Box will haunt your dreams. –April 30, 2020

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Swaying reeds caught me holding my breath. There is so much reverence for beauty, duty, and combat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that you may forget it’s a very sad ending. –April 30, 2020

The Nightingale

The second time she’s raped, you think The Nightingale can’t get any worse. And it does. And it’s brilliant for overlapping vengeance with intersectionality in a Western from Australia. –April 30, 2020

The Biggest Little Farm

The Biggest Little Farm is a noble experiment in transforming White guilt into sustainable living. It’s a model few can emulate, but it’s worth remembering when buying apples out of season. –April 30, 2020

Rambo: Last Blood

Rambo: Last Blood: the worst part is I watched through the end credits. –April 30, 2020

Ghost in the Shell

Take 1: Ghost in the Shell, the anime, imagines our cyborg future through hypnotic imagery to celebrate a sentient computer virus. Not for all tastes. Yet it shows the coming overlap between machine and human being in provocative detail. Take 2: Machinery combined with a curvy woman results in the high-concept Ghost in the Shell. It’s eerie… Continue reading Ghost in the Shell

Real Steel

Hugh Jackman + boxing robot + unwanted boy = something enjoyable? Real Steel! –March 31, 2020

The Addams Family

Is this funny to you? Thing Addams, a disembodied hand, gets caught looking at naked, disembodied feet. If so, continue on through the animated The Addams Family.  –March 31, 2020

Playing with Fire

John Cena’s arm muscles have arm muscles, and he raises orphans in Playing with Fire. It’s so much better than terrible, and you’ll love the scene stealing by Luther the Anger Translator. –March 31, 2020

Hook

Hook wasn’t very good in 1991 and it’s still not very good. The story of Wendy saving dozens of UK orphans, though, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Maggie Smith playing her at varied life stages, is quite breathtakingly touching. –March 31, 2020

Good Boys

It’s not Superbad-level great, but Good Boys is funny and re-considers whether boys always following their wieners. –March 31, 2020

The Most Dangerous Game

The Most Dangerous Game is about a shipwrecked man becoming prey for a mankiller, but then he escapes and saves Fay Wray before she needed saving from King Kong. Re-made many times since and it still holds its own. –March 31, 2020

Run Lola Run

Take 1: Telling a story three different ways, Run Lola Run brilliantly explores three different outcomes with live action, animation, overlapping timelines, flashes of red, and bedroom conversation about a girl who loves a boy. And she runs, oh how she runs. Take 2: As a story, Run Lola Run dazzles with narrative experimentation. At its center, though, it… Continue reading Run Lola Run

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus made really bad movies. But they made a lot of really bad movies, and a couple of gems, too. See Electric Bugaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films to learn the full history of their weird, mediocre genius. –March 31, 2020

La La Land

Take 1: Watching John Legend play a sold-out version of himself is fun, but the theme of expressing truth in creative work, not just for profit but self-satisfaction, makes a lot of sense in La La Land every time Ryan Gosling does puppy dog eyes. Take 2: La La Land is so good that my eight-year… Continue reading La La Land

Dunkirk

We have too many movies about WWII. Still, Dunkirk combines three overlapping storylines that occur in one week, one day, and one hour. It’s not amazing until it is. Watch for production design. Listen to Hans Zimmer. Enjoy cameos. –March 31, 2020

On the Basis of Sex

RBG is a 3-D person with a family. That’s important, but her professional reputation rests on winning a case concerning a man who endured sex discrimination that led her to elevation as the second female justice of the US Supreme Court. On the Basis of Sex.  –March 31, 2020

Logan

When Professor X gets dementia, and when Wolverine develops cancer, who will save us? A girl with knuckle knifes, that’s who, meaning Logan is X-errific. –February 29, 2020

Elephant

Take 1: Gus Van Sant’s Elephant memorializes Columbine to make sense of children hunting children. There is no lesson and no uplift, just an attempt to make everyone seem like 3-D people, shooters included. Take 2: Columbine is a mononym for inexplicable violence. Elephant humanizes the context for mass school shooting events and hits hard after many circuitous minutes… Continue reading Elephant

Frankenstein

People remember Universal’s Frankenstein as the story of a dude with a flattop. It’s actually about a rich scientist with an abused pet that rouses a poor village to drunken vigilantism.  –February 29, 2020

Before Sunset

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hang out in Paris, talking and smiling, and thinking about how they might be soul mates in this middle chapter, Sunset, of Linklater’s Before trilogy.  –February 29, 2020

Terminator: Dark Fate

In Terminator: Dark Fate, Sarah Connor survives T2, but another T-1000, played by Ah-nold, kills her son. Then she meets a Mexican woman, the new JC when your stopwatch decides to kill you. It’s way sillier than it sounds. –February 29, 2020

Rock & Rule

Rock & Rule: or how bad it is when you add (The Secret of Nimh + Heavy Metal + Debbie Harry) and divide by (Ralph Bakshi – Harvey Pekar).  –February 29, 2020

Theodore Rex

Avoid Theodore Rex. Whoopi Goldberg is on record saying she regrets making it, but for a lawsuit that won’t give you back even one minute of 92 you can spend moving closer to death. –February 29, 2020

High Noon

Take 1: High Noon is a parable about 1950s Red Scare and the rule of law. It’ also about 50-something Gary Cooper trying to take 20-something Grace Kelly to bed on their honeymoon. Take 2: Young viewers may not understand the Red Scare metaphors of High Noon, but this hit from late Classical Hollywood is also a… Continue reading High Noon

The Great Debaters

Black folks telling stories about Black folks on Christmas? Try Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters, released with Oprah money on 12/25/2007. It’s about an all-Black debate team defeating Harvard in Jim Crow 1935 because, “an unjust law is no law at all.” –February 29, 2020

Kung Fu Panda 2

You can watch it over and over, and Kung Fu Panda 2 remains a great movie. –February 29, 2020

Border

Take 1: Ever wondered how a troll makes love? Or what a baby troll looks like? Or how a troll finds meaningful work in human society? Border has the answers. And naked trolls, too! Take 2: Imagine the elevator pitch: a custom official, who is a troll, meets another troll and learns that her life isn’t a… Continue reading Border

The Lion King

Photorealistic CGI animals look cool, but they can’t act. Even J. Earl J. reprising his role as The Lion King is a stupid waste of time. –January 31, 2020

The Last Airbender

I wish The Last Airbender was worse so I could hate it. As it is, we know, definitively, that M. Night Shyamalan breaks wind. –January 31, 2020

T2: Trainspotting

Trainspotting is a fantastic movie; T2: Trainspotting is not. But any fan boy or girl will like seeing Renton and the boys again. “First, there’s an opportunity. Then, there’s a betrayal.” –January 31, 2020

Long Shot

Seth Rogen lives a charmed life. Along with Charlize Theron, one of this generation’s great talents, their romance in Long Shot is funnier than it ought to be because he plays Boy Friday to her Queen. –January 31, 2020

Zardoz

In Zardoz Sean Connery wears a ponytail, red underpants, and knee-high boots. And that’s the sanest part of the movie that also features an aircraft in the shape of a floating head, lots of British conversational dithering, and Charlotte Rampling. Hubba hubba. –January 31, 2020

Westworld

Westworld is creepy because it was released in 1973 when AI wasn’t an acronym in Tweets, when amusement parks were amusing, and when most of us thought the worst part of the Old West was horse apples. –January 31, 2020

Avengers: Endgame

Take 1: Fat Thor and his MCU compadres plan how to defeat the only being in the galaxy, Thanos, with a solution for the destructive nature of humankind. Still, Avengers: Endgame got me all swole up with Iron Man’s sub-story. Take 2: Avengers: Endgame: in which the paradox of time travel is self-consciously unpacked as an illusion… Continue reading Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Infinity War

Take 1: Much is made over the fate of MCU heroes and heroines, but here’s the thing: Avengers: Infinity War is about a muscle-bound, purple-skinned, power priest saving the universe by making hard choices no one else will. All praise Thanos. Take 2: Avengers: Infinity War: I like it better the second time through because it solves… Continue reading Avengers: Infinity War

Little

Girls are mean, and they become mean women. Then magic makes them little and nice in Little, the most crowd-pleasing, okay-ish age-switch movie since Freaky Friday? –December 31, 2019

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Anthology entertainment is risky. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has Tom Waits. Brilliant. But it also has a stagecoach packed with malcontents, or the Coens spend goodwill unwisely.  –December 31, 2019

Best in Show

Best in Show is an exquisitely loving, reality TV-adjacent “mockumentary.” See it if this dialogue is funny: “Pine nut, which is a nut, but it’s also the name of a town.”  –December 31, 2019

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

I sat up in my seat and hooted and refused deep thoughts on my way to thoroughly and embarrassingly enjoying The Rise of Skywalker. Side note: did you know that overriding C-3PO’s hard drive is easier than unlocking an iPhone? –December 31, 2019

Bugsy Malone

British filmmaker Alan Parker thought it would be fun to cast children in a gangster movie. Bugsy Malone is the result, featuring Scott Baio and Jodie Foster with music by Paul Williams. And it’s terrible. And hard to avoid thinking about once seen. –December 31, 2019

Hustlers

Take 1: Goodfellas meets Adam & Eve in Hustlers, wherein nearly naked beautiful women remain beautiful and exploited, whether they work for themselves or not. It may be feminism with Jennifer Lopez as a showstopping fitness athlete, but the best part is watching Usher make it rain. Take 2: Near-nude women get you in the door to Hustlers.… Continue reading Hustlers

The Cotton Club Encore

Cotton Club Encore has direct address songs and stunning reconstructions of period costume, props, sets, and racial customs. Too bad people in 1984 didn’t get the benefit of the Encore improvements (2017) that make this lesser Coppola flick into something worthwhile. –December 31, 2019

Legend of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Turn 300’s naked Spartans into warring owls, and you’ve spent too much time worrying about nonsense. But Legend of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole passes time better than any live-action Disney remake. –November 30, 2019

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the one where a boy named Peter fights Batman dressed as Vulture. And Zendaya doesn’t sing. Miraculously, it’s pleasant. –November 30, 2019

Wonder Park

The story of a daughter mourning her sick mother made me cry. Then Wonder Park kept going, and I had to watch it through to the end because I’d already paid the rental fee. –November 30, 2019

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert is brilliant. Equal parts storytelling + profane turns of phrase + racial mimicry + nervy performance = Kevin Hart X 2. –November 30, 2019

The Big Race

Sometimes you watch older movies out of curiosity. Sometimes you do this with friends. And sometimes you sit through The Big Race by Blake Edwards. Read Wikipedia instead. –November 30, 2019

Annie

I remember the early ’80s Annie and I avoided the re-make, courtesy of Will Smith and Jay-Z. Then I did see it, and it wasn’t good, exactly, but seeing so much Black wealth and accomplishment on a movie screen is a salve for the soul. –November 30, 2019

Drunktown’s Finest

Drunktown’s Finest is a Navajo transwoman’s kitchen sink realist take on coming-of-age on the Rez. It’s totally uneven, but how often do you see Native American life without cowboys shooting brown people before slugging whiskey? –November 30, 2019

Ed Wood

Ed Wood combines multiple stories of non-conformity with the virtues of an all-star cast in a Tim Burton film. And it’s in black-and-white. See it now. –November 30, 2019

The Irishman

It’s way too long, but The Irishman pulls off a decades-spanning story of male loyalty to the mob. I just wish the Irishman, himself, was more than DeNiro doing a mobster doing a DeNiro-mobster. My Gods, the production design. Wow! –November 30, 2019

Frozen II

Take 1: Frozen II = more of same. The animation is great, and several songs are haunting. But I felt like I was inside an advertisement for things I should buy rather than a moving story. Take 2: Frozen II is a jukebox musical with original songs that copy pop styles from the last 40 years. And… Continue reading Frozen II

I Am Not Your Negro

When Samuel L. Jackson stops chewing scenery and simply narrates the words of James Baldwin, the result is a kind of magic. I Am Not Your Negro is a showcase for documentary editing and sound mixing, and also of Black American creative brilliance. –October 31, 2019

Captain America: Civil War

Captain American: Civil War has, at its center, one key question: is Chris Evans more handsome than RDJ? And, if so, can his character’s worldview of naïve patriotism really compete with Iron Man’s neocon pragmatism? –October 31, 2019

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Jesse Pinkman escapes the meth den of Breaking Bad and gets his own movie, El Camino. It’s good, too, but not brilliant, save for any sequence with Jesse Plemons. Hold on to your socks for “Sharing the Night Together.” –October 31, 2019

Black Panther

Take 1: All those shades of brown-skinned people in speaking parts that call for a range of emotion make Black Panther a triumph of imagery. But it’s less than the sum of its praiseworthy parts. Take 2: Black Panther is not a documentary about large cats. But it is about a wealthy Black African nation hiding from colonizing,… Continue reading Black Panther

A Better Life

Chris Weitz atoned for directing New Moon by making A Better Life, and I forgive him. Life is a brilliant, non-showy story of how an undocumented single father tries to care for his son under threat of deportation. Keep the tissues handy. –October 31, 2019

Zombieland: Double Tap

The first rule is cardio. The second rule ought to be: avoid re-visiting the well. Zombieland: Double Tap is unnecessary and repetitive, but it does have fun with doppelgangers, peaceniks, Elvis Presley, and a minivan. –October 31, 2019

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Take 1: Little Tommy Cruise does it again: Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a marvel of brilliant stunt work, action, violence, and big screen excitement. Early fun is had in a men’s room with Henry “hubba-hubba” Cavill. And Alec Baldwin dies, too! Take 2: God bless the stunt coordinators: Mission: Impossible – Fallout satisfies because T. Cruise (the fast… Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Fallout

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Disney TV programming mirrors Classical Hollywood. Like MGM in the 1940s HSM 3: Senior Year showcases highly polished props called “people” who sing and dance through a happy ending that’s hard to dislike because everything is so cheery. –September 30, 2019

Invictus

I’m an Eastwood completist, but I couldn’t watch Invictus and keep from wondering, “What would Will Munny do if someone hurt Ned Logan?” Answer: play rugby with Matt Damon. Question: what in the hell is rugby? –September 30, 2019

Missing Link

I saw Missing Link and I liked it. I think it’s about the problem of manufacturing reliable handcuffs. –September 30, 2019

The Secret Life of Pets 2

The Secret Life of Pets 2 offers Harrison Ford doing VO work as an old animated guard dog. So, it’s a documentary? –September 30, 2019

War Horse

War Horse starts well. Then it keeps going. Premise: a horse and the boy who loves it both go to WWI. Many people die in beautifully crafted sets with exquisite cinematography. Credit the Horse for being the best thing on screen. Oscars-so-Human. –September 30, 2019

Always Be My Maybe

Ali Wong, queen of analingus (jokes), can cook. Can you believe it? In Always Be My Maybe she also humps Keanu Reeves before finding her soul mate, Randall Park. Of course, all real names have been changed to preserve the innocent.  –August 31, 2019

Chef

Jon Favreau has grown stout in middle age while getting wealthy in the MCU. Chef shows him making food and food porn, while enlisting celebrity buddies to help his character become a proper father, husband, and entrepreneur. It’s good.  –August 31, 2019

Cry Baby

Cry-Baby is one of John Waters’s most “normal” movies. Look for Willem Dafoe chewing scenery with Iggy Pop in a bathtub. Also: enjoy the unrefined Ricki Lake, a non-XXX-and-mainstream-adjacent Traci Lords, and a young, young, young Johnny Depp in the lead. –August 31, 2019

Das Boot: Director’s Cut

Ever seen a WWII movie? Underwater? From the POV of a Nazi sub? That’s Wolfgang Petersen’s brilliant and punishing Das Boot, which means “The Boat,” or war sucks, in case you need another reminder. –August 31, 2019

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

The Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood retcon of Tate/LaBianca isn’t for the faint of heart. Or anyone with ADHD. But the tension running through the ’60s backdrop as cover for Helter Skelter is palpable. And Brad Pitt was 53 when he shot his shirtless scene. Hubba-hubba. –August 31, 2019

The Incredible Hulk

Edward Norton’s turn as Bruce Banner isn’t very good. The MCU purist should see The Incredible Hulk, or you get your greens reading some old Lee/Kirby comic books, eating your broccoli, and having a wheatgrass shake. –August 31, 2019

The Little Mermaid

You know how Netflix is a great service for borrowing DVDs and Blurays, and often a brilliant source for original programming? There are exceptions, like The Little Mermaid, a live action re-telling of the fable starring King Peter of Narnia. –August 31, 2019

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

The self-consciousness of animated LEGO characters is disarming. I don’t get it, but The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Partsucceeds because it piles on self-conscious intertextuality to such a degree that any critic is pummeled into submission and (egad) some joy. –July 31, 2019

Toy Story 4

It’s really unbelievable that Buzz and Woody, and the gang, have more story within them. But they do, courtesy of screenwriters Stephany Folsom and Andrew Stanton. See Toy Story 4.  –July 31, 2019

Destroyer

Nicole Kidman does ugly-pretty in Destroyer, a somewhat confusing take on undercover detective work gone bad in a botched bank robbery. Bouncing through 15 years of story world makes the conclusion more lyrical, but is anything gained with this non-linear story? –July 31, 2019

Devil’s Advocate

Pacino does his bug-eyed “Hoo-ah!” best in Devil’s Advocate while Keanu Reeves wears skinny jeans to avoid humping his sister. Why? Lawyers are the vanguard of Beelzebub’s plot to start Armageddon. It’s much more satisfying than you might imagine. –July 31, 2019

Hercules

The Rock’s got it. Hercules is about a team of warriors that become a singular identity, Hercules, through lots of adventures. Now pick up a copy of d’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. –July 31, 2019

Revenge

It’s hard to believe the human body carries as much blood as Revenge suggests is inside a single impaled, rape survivor-turned-avenger. When she attacks her assailants, they bleed a lot too. Is this French feminism or is this schlock? –July 31, 2019

Support the Girls

Mumble-core meets Hooters, or: Support the Girls, a tale of sports bar waitresses and their mother figure/manager (Regina Hall). The problem of work-place exploitation haunts the frame, which is focused, first and last, on doing an ethical job, no matter what. –July 31, 2019

The Legend of Billie Jean

The Legend of Billie Jean is rad, from Pat Benatar’s theme through a chase in a mall. The titular heroine goes #MeToo because she lives in a trailer and no adult believes she was sexually assaulted. Not a good movie, exactly, but it’s on-target for mid-’80s nostalgia. –July 31, 2019

The Raid 2

Stop what you’re doing and see The Raid 2. With talented martial artists, lots of set piece mayhem, and great stunt work, the movie hums, even as you squint through protracted bloodshed, bone breaks, and cruelty.  –July 31, 2019

Coco

Finally got around to Coco. No matter how hard I tried to resist, Pixar made me cry.   –June 30, 2019

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a motion capture experiment from 2001 featuring Ming Na and Alex Baldwin. When Na was on ER and Baldwin was narrator for Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. It isn’t good.  –June 30, 2019

Ice Age: Collision Course

Scrat is a working man’s hero. In space. With no nuts. See Ice Age: Collision Course, if you’re series completist. Otherwise: nap. –June 30, 2019

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Take 1: Jiro Dreams of Sushi features an artist. See it on an empty stomach and avoid your local grocery store’s prefab sushi lunch trays forever. Take 2: Jiro Dreams of Sushi presents edible magic in movie form. –November 30, 2024

Girls Trip

When Tiffany Haddish sucks off a grapefruit, it’s wet yourself funny. The rest of Girls Trip holds its own. –June 30, 2019

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

God bless Keanu. In John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum he weaponizes a Central Park horse, fights alongside Halle Berry, and watches Al Swearengen drink brandy. It’s adrenalized nonsense. Can’t wait for chapter 4. –June 30, 2019

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The live action 1990 version of TMNT should not be this good. Wait for the Jim Henson-enabled training sequence with pre-mutation Splinter practicing martial arts in a cage. It’s cinematic gold. –June 30, 2019

Vice

Richard Cheney is an overweight heart patient with an alcohol problem and a true-believer wife. Vice makes fun of us because we elected 43 so this Dick could run the country. –June 30, 2019

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Verse looks really terrific. I never tire of Jake Johnson’s slacker-dude and I like Black-centric anything. But shouldn’t the Oscar winner for Animated Feature be better than this? –May 31, 2019

Tarzan

Phil Collins did the soundtrack to Disney’s Tarzan, which has really kinetic animation, and Phil won an Oscar for “You’ll Be in My Heart.” Meaning: “Sussudio” gets the girl when he finally visits Uganda. –May 31, 2019

Back to School

Teen movies of the ’80s are weird. EX: Back to School. How can you explain Rodney Dangerfield’s Triple Lindy, the appearances of Oingo Boingo, Kurt Vonnegut, and Sam Kinison, and the fact RDJ hasn’t fixed his teeth? –May 31, 2019

Aladdin

Will Smith’s Genie in the live action Aladdin reminds me how brilliant Robin Williams was. –May 31, 2019

Bumble Bee

Michael Bay turned a silly toy into a noisy, awful Transformers franchise. Travis Knight added ’80s nostalgia with Bon Jovi on the soundtrack. And Bumble Bee works. –May 31, 2019

Captain America: The First Avenger

Tommy Lee Jones can do no wrong and Chris Evans is handsome. Like, when you look up “handsome” in the dictionary, you see Captain American: The First Avenger. –May 31, 2019

Crazy Rich Asians

Everyone is beautiful because Singapore is so damn beautiful. Crazy Rich Asians is feast of senses with no relationship, whatsoever, to whatever you’re doing today. And that’s why it works as a romantic fable.  –May 31, 2019

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a Michael Caine delight. Look for Steve Martin’s Ruprecht using a cork-topped fork to poke himself in the eye. –May 31, 2019

Love, Simon

Take 1: The parents in Love, Simon confront their heteronormative bias and remain devoted to their boy. Not every parent does, so I am happy to see on-screen surrogates behave as I hope I will behave when/if I find myself in similar circumstances. Take 2: It’s hard to be a suburban, White, technology savvy, (closeted) gay, male… Continue reading Love, Simon

Fail State

Higher education is expensive. Many students do poorly, get into debt, and drop-out, and that’s a design feature of many for-profit schools. Read all about it in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Lower Ed and/or watch Alexander Shebanow’s doc Fail State. –April 20, 2019

Iron Man

Never a fan of comic books, I bumped into Iron Man wondering what Robert Downey, Jr. was doing with his time, now sober. Answer: wearing metal underpants and saving the world. Not bad for a recovering addict with some of the most potent screen charm of his generation. –April 30, 2019

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Children are supposed to outlive their parents, but some kids get sick and die. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is about a weirdo-teen friendship. Start it for the warm treatment of terminal disease among high schoolers. Remember it for the parody titles of famous movies. –April 30, 2019

Miracle at St. Anna

Miracle at St. Anna has a scene where Black American soldiers cross a river to assault a Nazi position while listening to a Tokyo Rose-like broadcast of race criticism. It’s genius. The rest of the movie isn’t. –April 30, 2019

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

An autistic boy gets lost in New York during a hurricane. Stand Clear of the Closing Door is immersion into the Autism spectrum, and it works because it doesn’t moralize or insult, plead or “make cute.” We simply want Ricky to get home safe, and so does his mother. –April 30, 2019stan

The Highwaymen

Woody Harrelson and Kevin Costner have matured in the decades of movies, but not so much you can’t watch them hunt Bonnie and Clyde. The Highwaymen is a mash up of Road to Perdition with a dash of Open Range and Grumpy Old Men. SPOILER: B&C die in the end. –March 31, 2019

Free Solo

When a person commits suicide unsuccessfully, and they have world-class balance, strength, and Autism spectrum single-mindedness, that person might Free Solo like Alex Honnold. Remember: he climbed El Capitan without safety equipment, alone. –March 31, 2019

How to Train Your Dragon 2

In How to Train Your Dragon 2 the boy, Hiccup, advances his symbiotic relationship with a dragon, Toothless, because he’s missing a foot and the dragon’s missing a tail fin. They fight the voice of Djimon Hounsou because we don’t have enough Black villains in movies. –March 31, 2019

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is terrifically beautiful and conclusive. But the dragon preserve beneath the ocean would collapse the world of humans and cause massive global extinction. –March 31, 2019

Monsters University

Unlike my college experience, the characters in Monsters University learn a practical skill. –March 31, 2019

Holy Flame of the Martial World

Holy Flame of the Martial World is off-the-hook. Martial artists do battle with “ghostly laugh” and swords and fists through outrageously silly action choreography that papers the cracks of a vengeance plot. No cartoon is this satisfying. –March 31, 2019

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Take 1: See The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Right now. We’re waiting. You need to know why Gordon Liu is heir-apparent to Bruce Lee’s throne. The stunts rock, linking a series of training sequences to enjoyable confrontations with 2-D bad guys. It’s super-duper rad. Take 2: Gordon Liu = Jesus Christ in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. –March 31,… Continue reading The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

The Golden Buddha

Imagine an Asian James Bond in the 1960s, and he travels through Thailand and Malaysia seeking The Golden Buddha so you don’t have to. Unless you sit for a HK movie marathon, this is something to know exists but can be safely returned to the shelf, unseen. –March 31, 2019

Triple Frontier

Put a bunch of hot dudes together with guns, military backstories, and money trouble, and unleash them in Narcosterritory, and what do you get? The loss of 2+ hours. Triple Frontier. –March 31, 2019

Us

Us is fine, but over-publicized. Lupita Nyong’o is magnetic, true, but I am still wondering how the Tethered avoid scurvy on a diet of 100% rabbit. –March 31, 2019

Call Her Savage

Old movies are sometimes terrific. Often, though, they are boring and markers of something we no longer enjoy, like milk left on the counter. Yes, you can grow things with it, which is cool, but you should not drink it. Call Her Savage. –February 28, 2019

Gabriel Over the White House

Yo, Republicrats. A Socialist has already been President. See Gabriel Over the White House and wash it down with a tall glass of communally pumped spring water brought to you from a non-superfund site near a Native American safe space. –February 28, 2019

Pariah

Pariah makes me happy. It’s not every day that a middle-aged white dude hangs out with a teenaged Black lesbian and doesn’t react to her life with silly moral panic because people like me aren’t the center of everything. –February 28, 2019

Safe in Hell

Safe in Hell features one woman on a deserted island with a bunch of ne’er do well fellas that have a lot of booze and racial privilege. It’s sounds like a Jules Jordan original, but it’s actually a pre-Code relic that needs more attention from people like you. –February 28, 2019

Spider-Man

Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man is as a May/December romance featuring Willem Dafoe and Tobey Maguire with a splash of longing from James Franco. –February 28, 2019

Spider-Man 2

Maybe it’s Alfred Molina’s uneven grin, or Kirsten Dunst’s sleepy eyes. Probably, it has something to do with Tobey Maguire’s “What, me worry?” vibe, but Spider-Man 2 is the best of the first trilogy of Spideys. –February 28, 2019

Spider-Man 3

If your name is Sandman, and your power is contracting or swelling your sandy body to any size, but you were led down a dark path to save your dying daughter, why bother with Spider-Man 3? –February 28, 2019

The Blind Side

Sandra Bullock got an Oscar for showing us how White Saviors are real when her sparky know-it-all makes a poor Black boy into a college graduate. The Blind Side. –February 28, 2019

Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World: Natalie Portman wanders around, carousing with Idris Elba and Liam Hemsworth’s ugly older brother to defy Hannibal Lecter because Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend is a scamp. –February 28, 2019

Wayne’s World

You can watch Queen’s video to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and you can buy the song on a “best of” album. But you should watch Wayne’s World, and see how early the 1990s tastemakers Wayne and Garth introduced my generation to rock royalty. –February 28, 2019

Ralph Breaks the Internet

When your child sees Ralph Breaks the Internet and feels frightened of Ralph’s computer virus-multiplied self in the finale, you wonder if Disney has struck a new line of tragic possibility or merely found the best way to copy/paste animation code and fill up a screen. –January 31, 2019

Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck’s Baby Face is turned out by her father at age 14. Over time she exploits the sexual needs of grubby men and becomes wealthy. You know, like a Kardashian, circa 1933. –January 31, 2019

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 isn’t a movie so much as a series of auditions written for RDJ and Mickey Rourke, as if they were still, in 2010, seeking the affection of casting agents from the early 1980s. And they take us to Flushing Meadows, Queens for a robot rumble. –January 31, 2019

Russian Ark

Russian Ark is a ludicrously ambitious exercise in single-take filmmaking that runs to 96 minutes, moving through dozens of rooms in the Hermitage Museum, recounting a few hundred years of Russian history, and no one trips.  –January 31, 2019

Thor

If you were a God, wouldn’t you spend eternity exploring your appetites? In Thor, our boy falls for a human braniac and visits New Mexico when he should be making our planet over into Hedonism Earth. –January 31, 2019

Riding Giants

Ocean waves are beautiful but mean. People who ride them are crazy. People who make movies about crazy athletes riding beautiful, mean waves are magicians. See Riding Giants. –December 31, 2018

Blast of Silence

I’d never heard of Blast of Silence before a friend shared it with me. It’s the story of a hitman with a moral reckoning, shot on location in New York City in the early 1960s. Not for all tastes, but a nice little gem that should be remembered. –December 31, 2018

Drumline

Football fields are for marching bands. Sub musical instruments for shoulder pads and racially-conscious collegiate striving for muscle-head violence, and you get Nick Cannon in Drumline. You’re welcome. –December 31, 2018

Jason and the Argonauts

Greek myths have it all: homoeroticism, swords, monsters, lessons, and cool names (Apollo, anyone?). Jason and the Argonauts also has Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion skeletons. –December 31, 2018

Justice League

Organizing Justice League like a MCU one-off is smart. Backstories are brief, and everyone looks good. I rather enjoyed myself, quite unexpectedly. –December 31, 2018

Lean on Me

Lean on Me is a song by Bill Withers. It’s also a biopic starring Morgan Freeman. Both are good, but it’s really fun to watch Benson tell Freeman, “Shut up.” –December 31, 2018

Love Actually

When watching Love Actually with three generations of women, aged 7 through 70, you squirm when Bilbo Baggins works as a porno stand-in on the way to Emma Thompson getting her heart broken by Professor Snape. –December 31, 2018

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins is outstanding art and entertainment. Mary Poppins Returns is entertainment. –December 31, 2018

Matilda

Roald Dahl was a misanthrope. His books are dark fantasies of cruelty. The movies made from these books are nowhere near as mean, and that’s a problem. At least Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman get to play dumb-dumbs in Matilda. –December 31, 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Han Solo and Chewbacca meet in a mud pit in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is the place where Wookies typically swipe right to hook up with GGG humans.  –December 31, 2018

The Avengers

The Hulk is unstoppable. Why don’t The Avengers kick him in the junk and send him after the bad guys that attack Manhattan through a space portal that resembles an intergalactic anus? –December 31, 2018

Wolf Warrior 2

Chinese action movies may lack Hollywood budgets, but they do not lack video game-level violent excess and irony-proof patriotism. Wolf Warrior 2 is Jing Wu’s turn as Asian Tom Cruise, saving Africans in a fugue of gleeful action. It’s a sequel and the good guys win. –December 31, 2018

Beethoven

If Cujo enjoyed music, he would sing, “Duh, duh, duh, duhhhhh.” That’s a fifth of Beethoven, the least enjoyable of celebrated-composer biopics, although there is a really convincing Charles Grodin mask to keep up an illusion of fun. –November 30, 2018

BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee does it again. BlacKkKlansman is a fully impregnated work of art that tells the real story of a Black cop who, with a Jewish cop, infiltrates the KKK. Seems impossible. But it isn’t. And it’s really, really good. –November 30, 2018

Lars and the Real Girl

Before Ryan Gosling was Eva Mendes’s Baby Daddy, he was a child actor turned adult performer alternating saccharine roles with real meat and potatoes. Lars and the Real Girl is where weird becomes beautiful. –November 30, 2018

Last Flag Flying

Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne, and Bryan Cranston walk into a bar. Repeatedly. And they buy cell phones to help Dan from Reel life bury his KIA son. It’s slow and uneven, but Last Flag Flying has a few really fine moments of man-love and sadness. –November 30, 2018

Widows

Widows sucks. Sure, it’s beautifully shot; Steve McQueen and Sean Bobbitt compose things well. Yes, watching Liam Neeson make out with Viola Davis is terrific. And Daniel Kaluuya is a marvel. But the plot is senseless drivel.  –November 30, 2018

22 July

Paul Greengrass makes impressive, morally-sensitive, exhausting movies. 22 July is about surviving the real-life, 2011 mass murder in Norway. It includes mutilated children, alt-right villainy, and a legal establishment that seeks justice when going John Wick is so much easier. –October 31, 2018

Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train is about a bored man (Robert Walker as Bruno) who traps a tennis player in a murder pact. Watch Bruno cruise Farley Granger (yummy) and confront a kid with a balloon (pop). Also look forward to the carousel finale when Hitchcock goes bonkers. –October 31, 2018

Mudbound

Dee Rees knows her business and Mary J. Blige can act. Mudbound is a story about living through the Jim Crowe South following WWII, but there is a happy ending, and the White people, for once, aren’t saviors, just people acting from privilege in deep, deep poverty. –September 30, 2018

Thor: Ragnarok

Chris Hemsworth is really handsome. Even with short hair, which is new to Thor: Ragnarok and has something to do with the MCU, but then, who are we fooling? Hemsworth is handsome. –September 30, 2018

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

“The Chanukah Song” is Adam Sandler’s best work. Then there’s the Hotel Transylvania series, including #3: Summer Vacation. Everything else is might keep me from more valuable sleep. –August 30, 2018

Religulous

Bill Maher mocks God(s) in Religulous and then lets faithful people offer terrible origin stories. The best part is touring the Creation Museum.  –August 30, 2018

Beatriz at Dinner

John Lithgow’s real estate developer terrorizes dinner guests while Salma Hayek’s saintly masseuse shows him up. Then she goes swimming. It’s Beatriz at Dinner. Funny, right? –August 30, 2018

A Bad Mom’s Christmas

A Bad Moms Christmas features meaningful eye contact between a male stripper having his scrotum waxed by a single mom. And other funny stuff, too. –August 30, 2018 

Blindspotting

Daveed Diggs witnesses a police-involved murder in Blindspotting. Start it for the inter-racial friendship, but finish for the final confrontation, as our 3rd President rap-fights his way through not shooting someone dead. –August 30, 2018

Murder on the Orient Express

Take 1: Everyone looks good in Kenneth Brannagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, but it’s a shame I can’t remember what it’s about. Lots of someones kill Johnny Depp, and I think he deserves it. Take 2: Murder on the Orient Express is defiantly well-crafted, from every prop through every article of costuming draped over a dream… Continue reading Murder on the Orient Express

Red Dawn

Shout “Wolverines!” among people of a certain age and their eyes roll back, thinking about Swayze in snow camouflage. See Red Dawn for Reagan era zeitgeist and then enjoy a mug of deer blood. –August 30, 2018

Juno

A “good” decision made on behalf of others keeps open the greatest number of options. Enter Juno, in which an accidental teen pregnancy helps true love blossom on the way to a complicated, humorous adoption that remains pro-choice, through and through. –July 31, 2018

Isle of the Dogs

Isle of the Dogs is another Wes Anderson object of eccentricity, intertextual reference, and in-group dialogue among frequent collaborators that uses stop-motion animation to become both fascinating (attractive and repulsive) and hat tipping (“I finally got that joke!”). –July 31, 2018

Alvin and Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

Denzel hunts another group of bad guys in The Equalizer 2. This time he has a young man to defend, an ally to avenge, and a more creative use of flour than you might imagine. So what? –July 31, 2018

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

A lone wolf defeating a drug cartel and the US government is ridiculous. Watching Sicario: Day of the Soldado puts some training wheels on the fantasy as Benicio del Toro chews scenery with a wicked teen actress (Isabela Merced) and Thanos playing an Earthman on Halloween. –July 31, 2018

A Quiet Place

Take 1: A Quiet Place is the one where a husband uses his children and pregnant wife to attract monsters, like a fisherman trolling for game fish, aka date night in the household of Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Take 2: A Quiet Place is a father/daughter tale of surviving alien invasion with heartland ingenuity that promotes… Continue reading A Quiet Place

The Equalizer 2

Denzel hunts another group of bad guys in The Equalizer 2. This time he has a young man to defend, an ally to avenge, and a more creative use of flour than you might imagine. So what? –July 31, 2018

Despicable Me 3

Pierre Coffin likes making funny voices with his friend Kyle Balda, and they directed Despicable Me 3. Meaning: I confirm the movie exists. It entertains many kids, perhaps also the children of the movie’s star Steve Carell. But I don’t like it. –July 31, 2018

The Purge: Anarchy

Any sequel to a grinder risks failure, and failure is what The Purge: Anarchy achieves. We’re back in a parallel future where any crime goes, just one day a year, but the stakes are lower and less insightful in this first sequel to a charged home invasion original. –July 31, 2018

Lady Bird

Lady Bird is no FLOTUS biopic. Instead, Saoirse Ronan is a high school senior with mommy issues, a depressed dad, several good friends, and a desire to go, go, go, far away from home. It’s terrific. –June 30, 2018

I, Tonya

I remember watching small, muscular Tonya Harding skate, and feeling her WT aura. I, Tonya agrees, adding an intense central performance by Margot Robbie, a terrible mother in Allison Janney, and terrific honesty about the troublesome historical subject. –June 30, 2018

Incredibles 2

Superheroes are metaphors, and you decide their secondary meaning. Incredibles 2 adds a dollop of stay-at-home-dad-schtick to a wallop of several empowered women and an IT expert-turned-villain to prove that good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. –June 30, 2018

The Post

Newspapers ain’t what they used to be, so The Post has Hanks and Streep march through a Spielberg master class on American grit to show us how print journalism brought down Nixon. –June 30, 2018

Hostiles

Imagining the Old West as a knife stabbed into North America with Europeans walking the blade’s edge into native people helps Hostiles become the carefully wrought western that it is. Christian Bale, Wes Studi, and Rosamund Pike are easy on the eyes, too. –June 30, 2018

Tag

Tag: you’re it. By “it” I mean that you can watch this on TNT one afternoon when you’re ready to nap and wake up at intervals, pleased by the sight of Hawkeye in street clothes. –June 30, 2018

12 Strong

War porn for 2+ hours, 12 Strong is driven by the cowboy ethic of frontier violence, only this time set in Afghanistan right after 9/11 with a group of handsome dudes ready to kill. –June 30, 2018

Wind River

When Hawkeye isn’t cleaning up after the other Avengers, he’s working for the Fish and Wildlife Department, solving the murder of a Native American woman in Wind River and revenge never felt so good. –June 30, 2018

McFarland, USA

Kevin Costner’s middle career repeatedly frames him as aging White Savior. In McFarland, USA, based on a true story, he coaches immigrant boys in cross country running, and they become men of value. Formula achieved. –May 31, 2018

Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths is an insider story of how a screenwriter finishes a script. The point of the movie, though, is meeting the people that get in the way of his deadlines while serving him with the profane, aggressive, rat-a-tat monologues of Martin McDonagh. –May 31, 2018

Hidden Figures

Kevin Costner is back to help brilliant Black women code for NASA in the 1960s. Based on a true story, memorable scenes of caste assumption and racism linger because of the charisma of Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Mahershala Ali. –May 31, 2018

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a well-written, semi-racist story collection centered on human archetypes. Then it was weird ’60s cartoon. Now it’s a lame CGI re-tread with Idris Elba as the villain. Should be hubba-hubba. Instead: dumbadumba. –May 31, 2018

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn’t stick to the ribs. Adapting Roald Dahl seems perfect for Tim Burton, and everything looks great. My gripe? Depp’s Willy Wonka is too nice while Charlie is the kind of kid many wish they could push into a chocolate river. –May 31, 2018

Ravenous

An alternative Western set during the Mexican-American War, Ravenous asks the question: would you eat your platoon mates? Answer: in a stew. For restorative power. Because it tastes good and I’m hungry. –May 31, 2018

Peter Rabbit

I’ve read Beatrix Potter’s books so many times, the idea of clothed hedgehogs seems natural. Peter Rabbit features James Corden in the main vocal role against Sam Neill’s Mr. McGregor. Fantasy casting? Yes. Is it good? I don’t remember, but my six-year-old loved it. –May 31, 2018

The Pillow Book

Ewan McGregor gets naked in The Pillow Book, another mind blower from Peter Greenaway that centers on erotic exploration, tattoo, and romance. The story is thin, but vignettes are terrific. –May 31, 2018

Kubo and the Two Strings

The limits of parental love define Kubo and the Two Strings, in which a grieving orphan accepts the challenge of overcoming his evil grandfather through manipulating paper with song. Wait all the way through “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” –May 31, 2018

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

Godfrey Reggio has a great name and a documentary trilogy that began with Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance to meditate on how screwy modern people are. For evidence: enjoy the time lapse footage he assembles of people checking out of a grocery store. –April 30, 2018

Return

Linda Cardellini is a military reservist who returns home from the Middle East after her unit is called up. Unfortunately, the civilian world advanced without her, and she no longer fits in. Return is a slow burn that no one saw, but more people should. –April 30, 2018

Eye in the Sky

My kids have toy drones. The “kids” in Eye in the Sky have them, too, but their drones carry missile systems to murder (we hope) terrorists in the sweet spot where bureaucracy meets video games and the post-9/11 surveillance state. SPOILER: Helen Mirren wins. –April 30, 2018

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

“Whistle While You Work!” Ba-da-dum-dee-dum-dee-doo. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is as dated and old fashioned as you might imagine, but it’s also the cornerstone of the house that Walt built. –April 30, 2018

Spare Parts

Cultural capital is the body of knowledge a person must learn to navigate society. Spare Parts is the true story of high school boys in a mostly Latino school that use street smarts and hustle to succeed in a robotics competition. It’s sentimental pabulum, but it works. –April 30, 2018

Born in Flames

Lizzie Borden was an axe murderer whose names was assumed by the filmmaker of Born in Flames, a feminist sci-fi story about anti-sexist agitation. Done on a shoestring, it’s a movie of big ideas and mixed craft that openly irritates people not on board the underlying ideology. –April 30, 2018

Shrek

Shrek was once eye-opening as an animation pioneer. Then it was repeated in sequels and TV specials. Now it’s one booger joke away from being a kindergarten primer. –April 30, 2018

Pumping Iron II: The Women

Pumping Iron II: The Women almost has its Arnold in Rachel McLish, but mostly it’s a sideshow concerning the way female strength was once an addendum to bikini contests and dance competitions before it became a building block for all sports, generally. –April 30, 2018

The Red Chapel

North Korea is mostly off-limits outsiders, so any glimpse into its social fabric is interesting. The Red Chapel is real-life agit prop built around two comedians, earlier adopted out of NK, now returning to it on a cultural exchange to satirize life inside an authoritarian state. –April 30, 2018

Half Nelson

Half Nelson is proof that Ryan Gosling can play ugly. I don’t mean physically ugly, of course; he’s a middle school teacher strung out on heroine with a wise-beyond-her-years girl student who won’t give up on his potential. –April 30, 2018

El Norte

Two Guatemalan kids head to America when government troops kill their parents. The journey is dangerous and miserable, and tragedy awaits them. El Norte: or why US immigration policy frequently harms needy immigrants. –April 30, 2018

Rodents of Unusual Size

Take 1: Documentaries are best when they explore a subject that you didn’t know you urgently wanted to know more about. Rodents of Unusual Size is one such glimpse of the fascinating problem of nutria in North America. See it for the orange incisors. Then shop for a nutria-skin coat. Take 2: Watching Rodents of Unusual Size among newbies… Continue reading Rodents of Unusual Size

The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden is a sumptuously designed period piece about men using women that are using other women to use men. And there’s a central lesbian relationship that’s very directly explored. Enjoy the costumes. Wince over plot reversals. Listen for clanging of metal balls. –April 30, 2018

Mad Max

George Miller found the crazy behind Mel Gibson’s brilliant-good looks, combined it with muscle cars and a dystopian future, and then didn’t flinch about killing off a police officer’s wife and infant son. Stunt camera work, alone, is worth the price of admission.  –April 30, 2018

Ferdinand

The Story of Ferdinand is a great children’s story about a bull that loves flowers and doesn’t enjoy bull fights. It’s also a John Cena-voiced animation vehicle that’s better than you think it will be, but equally unmemorable and barely anything like Munro Leaf’s source material. –April 30, 2018

Super Fly

Youngblood Priest wants out of the game by selling enough coke to quit. Short on depth but long on swagger, Super Fly is worth watching for “Freddy’s Dead,” a cameo appearance by Curtis Mayfield, and the final fight where Priest beats crooked cops with slow motion karate. –March 31, 2018

In the Valley of Elah

Post 9/11 movies often defend American greatness. In the Valley of Elah does not follow suit, and it pulls something miraculous from the whodunit structure of Tommy Lee Jones helping Charlize Theron solve a case of PTSD-related madness. –March 31, 2018

Love & Basketball

Two perfectly matched young people love basketball and each other in Love & Basketball, which does a good job focusing on a girl’s sporting life, post Title IX, when such a life could become a profession and here, eventually, it does. –March 31, 2018

El Topo

It’s a Western, sort of, and it’s bonkers. Combine a gunfighter with a naked boy, dwarfs, opaque symbolism, religious extremism, violence, maimed bodies, disease, surreal imagery, and a climactic self-immolation. El Topo: you’ll be sorry if you (don’t) see it? –March 31, 2018

Brawl in Cell Block 99

Vince Vaughn is tall, which matters because he punches down into people throughout Brawl in Cell Block 99, a terrifically gory character study as cage fight. Note the story’s similarity to video game levelling up, and revel in the sound of cracked bones and yelps.  –March 31, 2018

Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk is a gory Western wherein a tribe of Native Americans menace a small White town with general savagery, so Kurt Russell organizes a posse to fight back. That’s where we learn what a bone tomahawk really is, as Russell shows his age, range, and a great mustache. –March 31, 2018

American Teacher

A chronicle of public education, American Teacher concentrates on the lives four people in a several years-long study. Sometimes dry, sometimes maddening, always on the level with seeing how care-giving adults try to encourage an education among children. –March 31, 2018

Gone Girl

Gone Girl is a miserable movie about miserable people based on a popular novel by Gillian Flynn. Just because David Fincher directed Flynn’s adapted script with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as co-stars does not elevate the material into something worth seeing.  –March 31, 2018

School of Rock

Jack Black is very appealing with loads of energy, and School of Rock stations him in a prep school music program. The story makes you want to pluck guitar strings or whack a drum, but it doesn’t stay in your memory when it’s through. –March 31, 2018

Fences

Fences centers on a philanderer and his long-suffering wife, played by Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. Their performances build on August Wilson’s landmark play, but the action is slow because their words are greater than the images capturing them. –March 31, 2018

Arrival

Take 1: Alien monoliths appear, so a troubled linguist is asked to communicate with ET before the generals go to war. Arrivalplays like a sci-fi gloss on tolerance, but it’s really the study of premonitory knowledge; can a person with the knowledge of the future accept it? Take 2: Arrival weaves an achronological story to let Amy… Continue reading Arrival

Pink Flamingos

Divine eats a dog turd, cannibals feast on humans, paraphilias are aired, and really grubby people pull at your eyes and ears for more than 90 minutes. Pink Flamingos is a negative classic, or anti-art punishment for attempted good taste. You’re on your own for needed therapy. –March 31, 2018

Dirty Dancing

“(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” tells the story of a requited love affair. But the overall movie, Dirty Dancing, for all its flirty fun, period music, and Swayze spectacle, is 100 minutes of asking an audience to root for statutory rape. –March 31, 2018

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

“Jiggle King” Russ Meyer triumphs with a script co-written by Roger Ebert. It’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, an outstandingly obnoxious, Queer-phobic/philic, racist/tolerant, anti-/pro-woman, schizophrenic excitement that’s fully aware of its excess and celebrity focus in the late 1960s.  –February 28, 2018

Land of Mine

Post-VE Day 1945, German POW youths dug up landmines in Denmark before dying or repatriating. Land of Mine is about this true-to-life peacetime slavery. But the magic is watching a battle-hardened warden become fatherly and kind. –February 28, 2018

Robocop

“I’d buy that for a dollar,” is something to say among boys of a certain age that saw a hard-R-rated movie and never realized it’s a fascist dream of AI-tech running humankind as a way to keep down the poor. Meaning: Robocop is a brilliant satire on the border with truth. –February 28, 2018

Blood and Roses

Modern people excite long-slumbering, nearby vampires. Death and investigations multiple, resulting in Blood and Rosesbeing neither scary, nor sexy, but an attempt to mix hi-low genre tropes that don’t stay in memory. –February 28, 2018

Loving

Living inside an inter-racial relationship, it’s hard to believe a romance like mine was once legally regulated. See Loving for a glimpse of the history that made this restriction a thing of the past. Thankfully. –February 28, 2018

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Rockwell and Harrelson nearly walk away with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Then Frances McDormand says, “My daughter Angela was murdered seven months ago. It seems to me the police department is too busy torturing black folk to solve actual crimes.” –February 28, 2018

Dracula

Que es más difícil? Bela Lugosi made himself famous starring in Tod Browning’s Dracula. George Melford simultaneously worked the graveyard shift with a different cast, using a Spanish language script and the same sets, and made the better movie.  –February 28, 2018

Moana

Moana wants more from her provincial life. “And no one leaves” she sings. Her father answer: “That’s right. We stay / We’re safe and we’re well provided.” In context, you’ll laugh at the difference between parent and child in this finely wrought, animated brilliance. –February 28, 2018

13th

Ava DuVernay is a big deal. Her doc 13th is about the US Constitution and America’s carceral state. Like DuVernay, it’s really provocative, and it reveals the “natural” rule of law as something constructed, artificial, biased, and cruel. –February 28, 2018

Song of the South

Song of the South tells us, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay / My, oh, my, what a wonderful way / To make Black people nothing, with songs that can say / Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!” –February 28, 2018

Strange Brew

Two beer fiends find jobs at a brewery where bad things happen along plot points of “Hamlet.” Hockey references and Oktoberfest float this Canadian cult-import. Strange Brew: “It’s a beauty way to go, eh?” –February 28, 2018

How I Learned to Love Women

How I Learned To Love Women : Cinema Quad Movie Poster

A rich ignoramus ventures into the world to better interpret women. Why? Because he wants to have sex. How I Learned to Love Women is a super low-stakes Italian comedy that’s better read about (just now) than actually seen. –February 28, 2018

Life, Animated

ASD folks face many challenges. Life, Animated concerns one non-verbal boy who acquires speech and meaning through watching Disney videotapes on the way to manhood where he seeks independence from the limits of neuro-atypical life. –February 28, 2018

Kill Bill: Volume 1

Take 1: Beatrix Kiddo was left for dead while hugely pregnant. Waking up from a coma, sans baby, she hunts those responsible. Kill Bill: Volume 1 is the resulting masterwork of QT doing Etch A Sketch genre homage with all cylinders firing at once. Take 2: Kill Bill: Volume 1 is bloody and fast, genre bending, a jigsaw… Continue reading Kill Bill: Volume 1

The Salesman

Asghar Farhadi provides an antidote to Iranian cultural restriction with The Salesman, a study of marital difficulties after a couple survives home invasion while also performing Death of a Salesman in modern Tehran. Exquisitely wrought neo-neorealism. –January 31, 2018

The Greatest Showman

Hugh Jackman really can sing and dance, and he wears the hell out of a top hat and tails. The Greatest Showman is also about how carnies are people, too. NOTE: No animal was harmed in the making of this capsule review, unlike in the real Barnum’s circus. –January 31, 2018

Baby Driver

I expected nothing. Then I saw and heard something way better than “meh.” Baby Driver combines tinnitus with stunt driving and 2-D-characters as the sandbox for good actors chewing scenery. Think ballet + criminal mischief / love story. –January 31, 2018

Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin shows why complicated families and violence don’t mix. A story of vengeance tied to the POV of a modern hermit, it’s great. Highlights include dumpster diving for dinner, a men’s room stabbing, and a crossbow leg skewer.  –January 31, 2018

Get Out

Over-praised, under-examined, well cast, and timely, Get Out was Jordan Peele’s “It” movie. Daniel Kaluuya anchors this fantasy spin on White supremacist hard drive backups. Enjoy the scene stealing of Lakeith Stanfield and Betty Gabriel. –January 31, 2018

Monsters vs. Aliens

Monsters vs. Aliens is a counterfactual about how the US government is both competent enough, and able, to hide supernatural creatures in an underground bunker. For decades. Without anyone catching on. Not even the folks near Area 51. –January 31, 2018

The Little Prince

A helicopter mom meets an elderly neighbor, and her overschedule daughter learns to reconcile a great story with how to make a good life for herself. It’s The Little Prince, but not the book you may have read or the movie with music by Lerner and Loewe. –January 31, 2018

"These are the words I said to you," sayeth the Curator, Garrett Chaffin-Quiray