LIVE BY NIGHT is so sumptuously photographed that it can almost make up for its shortcomings. Based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, it has weathered its translation by becoming a slight story heinously overblown. It also suffers from too many false endings. So many, in fact, that I can’t vouch… Read More »
SILENCE
Academics are taught to write with a dispassionate yet highly detailed style for their scholarly treatises. That is the approach that Martin Scorsese has taken with SILENCE, his philosophically dense and immaculately rendered film of Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. The result is a maddening film more to be admired than enjoyed as… Read More »
LONG WAY NORTH
LONG WAY NORTH uses deceptively simple animation to tell an epic adventure. At its center is Sasha (Christa Théret), a spirited and determined 15-year-old set on restoring her family’s honor, and the legacy her of her beloved grandfather, Oloukine (Féodor Atkine) an arctic explorer gone missing on his last expedition. It would be a monumental undertaking… Read More »
PASSENGERS
PASSENGERS is a long, increasingly preposterous slog whose most tantalizing element is the question of why Jennifer Lawrence looks so very much like a young Renee Zellweger in some shots. Has there always been such a striking resemblance, or is it that this film is so tedious and predictable that one has the time to… Read More »
ALLIED
There is an artistic license that we allow films that sweep us along when their emotional resonance is overpowering. Minor plot points that aren’t resolved, or factual errors. For an example of the latter, one need look no further than the Letters of Transit, desired by so many in CASABLANCA. No such thing. Yet it… Read More »
GOLDEN KINGDOM
Brian Perkins’ debut feature, GOLDEN KINGDOM, is a profoundly lyrical film about life, death, and spirituality. Set in a small rural Buddhist monastery in Myanmar, it’s the story of Ko Yin Witazara (Shine Htet Zaw), a boy monk who is put in charge of his three fellow boy monks when their abbot is called away… Read More »
HACKSAW RIDGE
Mel Gibson’s HACKSAW RIDGE begins with a quiet shot looking down (from heaven?) on corpses. They are horrific, with bits missing and gore everywhere. It’s a moment that will quickly give way to the battle of Okinawa that made them. Bodies ripped by bullets falling to the ground, others engulfed in flames running in panic.… Read More »
THE ACCOUNTANT
THE ACCOUNTANT is a flabby, overlong film with an earnest mission to make us all think differently about autism, and also to give us the cheap thrill of seeing justice meted out to those slimy financiers who manipulate high finance to the detriment of the little guys at the bottom of that particular food chain.… Read More »
DENIAL
DENIAL is a lean, literate, and emotionally devastating film. It’s based on the true story of Emory history professor Deborah E. Lipstadt’s (Rachel Weisz) legal battle in the British courts to prove that the Holocaust had actually taken place and was not, as asserted by Holocaust deniers, a construct invented by world Jewry as part… Read More »
DEEPWATER HORIZON
Peter Berg’s DEEPWATER HORIZON does not mince cinematic words when it comes to telling the story of the worst off-shore oil rig disaster in history. It can be summed up in three words. Profit over people. It’s a screed, alright, but a compelling, and beautifully crafted one about ordinary people facing the unimaginable with courage… Read More »
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