There is nothing more endearing that the story of a dog and its loyal owner, and this is eminently the case with the fact-based MEGAN LEAVEY. Usually the stuff of sentiment of the most syrupy nature, these stories usually inhabit a special sub-genre of family-friendly flicks designed to reassure the intrinsic goodness of the family… Read More »
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. II
When GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY blazed into theaters a few years back, it set a high standard for effects-laden sci-fi played for laughs. Volume II has now blazed into theaters, but that standard has not quite been met. This sequel drifts a bit into maudlin sentimentality that has no place in this particular universe, even… 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 »
A CURE FOR WELLNESS
Playing on the most primal of fears is a time-honored horror tradition. And Gore Verbinski’s A CURE FOR WELLNESS does just that. And then continues to do so for an unwarranted running time of around two-and-a-half hours. This hodge-podge of dental torture, putative madness, and a very clumsy use of eels as metaphor wears out its welcome well before the final credits roll, skittering at the end, and pell-mell at that, towards an ending that is painfully obvious and even more painfully trite.
A MAN CALLED OVE (En man som heter Ove)
When we meet the title character of A MAN CALLED OVE, he is having a very bad day. Squabbling with shop clerks, policing his neighbors regarding littering and pets, and being fired at almost 60 from the job he’s had since he was 16. Ove’s face is a study in dour dyspepsia, and his attitude… Read More »
BLAIR WITCH
Once again college kids with video cameras march into the dark piney woods in search of something better left undisturbed. Unlike previous attempts to capture the lightning in a bottle that was the original BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, attempts that went down in flames, writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard have taken the found-footage format… Read More »
NERVE
NERVE is a triumph of style. It is a slight story that fails on every level but two, and those are the ones that are the most important. Do we care about what happens to our unlikely heroine? Do the increasingly dangerous dares that make up that slight story keep us on the edge of… Read More »
THE ONES BELOW
There is definitely someone going crazy in THE ONES BELOW, and the wonderful thing about this astringent tale of mystery and suspense is that we have few doubts about who it is. The key word is few. Two couples who have layers, which may or may not be camouflage, experience tragedy, resentment, joy, and childbirth,… Read More »
PAPA: HEMINGWAY IN CUBA
The greatest virtue of PAPA: HEMINGWAY IN CUBA is that it was filmed in Cuba just after it was re-opened to the United States. It still looks the way it did over 50 years ago, when the story is set, which not too long before the United States embargo, protesting Castro’s revolution, went into place.… Read More »
LAZER TEAM
LAZER TEAM is a cheerfully cheesy homage to great and not-so-great sci-fi movies of days gone by. With a goofy sense of humor, a droll use of irony, and whipsmart comedic instincts, it tells the time-honored tale of misfits finding the greatness within themselves, while also saving the earth from evil alien invaders. It takes as… Read More »
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