It is a mantra that I have repeated at least once a day for many, many years now. Technology is our friend, but it is not our >good< friend. While my invocation of that is generally limited to computers, pay-stations, and the notorious aggravations of the voice-mail maze, SKYSCRAPER, the latest action flick from Dwayne Johnson, takes it to a whole new level while also sending a love letter to the low-tech reliability, magic even, of duct tape.
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
As the documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS opens, Bobby Shafran, one of the eponymous strangers, notes that the story he’s about to tell is unbelievable. And it is. But the way that Tim Wardle’s dark meditation on good intentions gone very wrong unfolds, the story of how the three identical triplets separated at birth found each other at the age of 19, is the least of it.
HEARTS BEAT LOUD
Click here for the flashback interview with Brett Haley and Katharine Ross for THE HERO. Timing is everything, as we learn in Brett Haley’s HEARTS BEAT LOUD, an irresistible, perfectly balanced comedy-drama about love, loss, and that old truism about the only constant that we can count on is change. It’s also Nick Offerman being… Read More »
JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
I’ll give JURASSIC WORLD:FALLEN KINGDOM this. When it leaps off the rails into utter inanity, it does so with grim determination and the courage of its (misguided) convictions. It continues on, camera swooping majestically and music swelling heroically with monotonous regularity, robbing the few truly worthy moments of their specialness, and drowning the rest of… 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 »
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
Click here for the flashback interview with Alden Ehrenreich for BEAUTIFUL CREATURES. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY annotates and amplifies the mythos surrounding that devilish anti-hero of the franchise, Han Solo. Set well before the events of EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE, it introduces us to Han before he learned to fly, but after he… Read More »
A QUIET PLACE
Why lob blood and guts when a lamp being knocked over can make you jump out of your seat?
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 »
I FEEL PRETTY
Amy Schumer. What the hell happened? Blazing into theaters with TRAINWRECK, a film that gleefully subverted rom-coms with extreme prejudice, she is now flailing through I FEEL PRETTY, her second disaster in a row. That both of them (the other was SNATCHED) were the very genre she set on fire is an irony that, perhaps,… Read More »
READY PLAYER ONE
With Steven Spielberg, sometimes, most of the time, you get E.T: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. Sometimes, though, you get 1941. It’s not that READY PLAYER ONE rivals the sheer ineptitude of the latter, but it is definitely skirting the shoals. With Spielberg, one has come to expect much, and so when presented with a flick that is… Read More »
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