In the 1970s, a simpler time, we had NETWORK, Paddy Chayefsky’s disturbingly prescient fever-dream of a black comedy about a television network run amorally amok thanks to a viewing audience with the attention span of a nudibranch and an alarming lack of critical thinking skills. We laughed and comforted ourselves that such extremes could never… Read More »
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
The stakes have been raised so many times with event flicks that, when approaching one, hope is always tempered with experience about what to expect, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson. With AVENGERS: ENDGAME, though, hope wins out. The spectacle is everything it should be, and the story, of necessity a meandering thing, is nonetheless sustained by… Read More »
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
For sheer value-for-money, you can’t top AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. It’s pure entertainment with an endless parade of the kind of whiz-bang special effects, not quite sloppy sentiment, and a constant barrage of the quips and banter that define grace under pressure in the Marvel Universe. Plus, pretty much everyone from the MCU finds his or… Read More »
HAIL, CAESAR!
If Douglas Sirk had directed a film noir written by Billy Wilder, it might have looked something like HAIL, CAESAR!, the latest thoughtful tangle of philosophy and whimsy from the Coen Brothers. Taking place in a 1951 Hollywood not entirely unlike the one that actually existed, it mixes Cold War paranoia, carefully managed studio PR… Read More »
SICARIO
There are many iconic moments in SICARIO, but the one that sticks in my mind is the one where dedicated and upright FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is being given the lowdown from glib and slippery DOJ agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) about what winning the war on drugs will really entail. The camera… Read More »
W
With all the hubbub in Oliver Stone’s W, it might be easy to miss the key line in it. That would be the one delivered by W himself. He’s having a heart-to-heart with the clergyman who is shepherding him through his born-again experience. In a moment of anguish, he bemoans the fact that people just… Read More »
JONAH HEX
It is a consistent if ill-considered move to make JONAH HEX as lifeless as the dead with whom the title character converses. Based on the DC Comic of the same name, it follows the adventures of said Jonah (Josh Brolin), a bounty hunter with heavy baggage, and even heavier facial disfigurement, as hes called upon… Read More »
YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
Woody Allen revisits questions of ethics and morals as lived in the real world in YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER. His characters bounce and bobble their way through a world without answers, in which they attempt to seize happiness from the jaws of despair with varying degrees of success. The central question is… Read More »
MEN IN BLACK 3
In MEN IN BLACK 3, the tone has shifted from one of hellzapopping fun to hellzappoping fun with a dollop of sentiment. It shouldnt work, but somehow it does. Not in the least because the script has a light touch when getting serious, and because Will Smith has some serious range. The premise is time… Read More »
OLDBOY
I cant pretend that I havent seen the original Korean version of OLD BOY, the one that blew away an international audience and earned cult status. Yet, even knowing the twist, nicely rearranged for this remake by screenwriter Mark Protosevich, is not enough reason to dismiss this flick. Despite Josh Brolins committed performance as a… Read More »