With A SIMPLE FAVOR, Paul Feig takes a very dark turn into neo-noir by way of a deliciously wicked social satire. There’s nary a hard-boiled detective in sight, but at the center of the film’s mystery, there is an enigmatic femme fatale to rival any from the golden age of that genre. The humor, courtesy… Read More »
OCEAN’S 8
So maybe you have a film franchise that is running out of steam. Maybe one of the stars wants out. Maybe his character was killed off to accommodate that. Maybe an actress has an idea for reviving that franchise with some panache and a dash of ovarian power. You can’t help thinking that one of… Read More »
THE ALIENIST
Meticulous in its detail, and lush in its recreation of 19th-century New York City, TNT’s 10-part adaptation of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist is on a par with Martin Scorsese’s similar cinematic visits to that period in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and GANGS OF NEW YORK. While those films separated the mighty and the downtrodden, THE… Read More »
THE COMMUTER
It’s all about what you want from a Liam Neeson action flick. That and managing expectations. Will it be great art? Probably not. Will it be fun? Maybe. In this case, it is. In THE COMMUTER, Neeson is an ordinary ex-cop turned insurance salesman named Mike, living paycheck to paycheck with his beloved wife (Elizabeth… Read More »
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
The rich, as the oft-quoted saw goes, are different. That is the central premise of ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, a cautionary tale of money and family. The moving force, though only a supporting player in the proceedings, J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who at one point reminisces about a book he wrote entitled… Read More »
SUBURBICON
Chekov’s three sisters had their dream of a perfect life in Moscow. The increasingly desperate and frazzled denizens of SUBURBICON have Aruba, a place where the food is exotic, the golf is for couples, and the long arm of the law cannot reach them. Alas, this deliciously stylized evocation of the dark side of the… Read More »
KILLING GROUND
The end of a relationship is always poignant. Be it an impulsive move made by one person that changes the dynamic forever, or a bullet to the head at close range, the finality is a moment is a time of reflection on the past, and a pondering of the future. The solidly made little horror… Read More »
THE ASSIGNMENT
The subject matter in Walter Hill’s THE ASSIGNMENT will make half the audience cringe in a way that the other half, no matter how empathetic, won’t be able to fully understand. And that’s sly. This brutal exercise in gender studies, masquerading as a biting action-noir fable, is rife with irony and with bald truths designed… Read More »
THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER
THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is a strikingly original horror tale told with an eerie and elegant style. The polished visuals, as chilly as the winter in which they take place, though, provide an unsettling framework for the visceral suspense of an ordered world falling quietly apart. It’s augmented with a sound design that is, against all… Read More »
MEAN DREAMS
MEAN DREAMS begins with a snake and ends with an apple. In between it is less bible story than a stark noir set in the bucolic autumnal countryside where Jonas (Josh Wiggins) and Casey (Sophie Nélisse), two emotionally damaged teenagers, meet and become each other’s unlikely salvation. Each is the child of fathers that are,… Read More »
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