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2/5
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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Remarkably, given the studio brand: this is absolutely Gunn's movie. It's cheerfully gross, frequently hideous to behold, nakedly emotional, indulgent to the point of bloat in its desire to tie off every narrative thread...and, happily, its own thing.
Posted May 25, 2023
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1/5
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Fast X
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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It’s overlong and over-the-top, but the real trouble is that when a series like this starts acknowledging its its own absurdities, they become harder to enjoy.
Posted May 25, 2023
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2/5
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Master Gardener
(2022)
|
Matthew Lickona
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The pleasure is not in the innovation, but in the variation.
Posted May 25, 2023
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1/5
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The Little Mermaid
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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Part of that world of lazy remakes, alas. At least Sebastian the crab is still fun.
Posted May 25, 2023
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2/5
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Suzume
(2022)
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Matthew Lickona
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It all makes for a fine adolescent adventure: travel, rebellion, unattainable love, a search, a chase, a deadline, and a little bit of growing up. And happily, the film understands that some problems don’t get resolved without real sacrifice.
Posted Apr 27, 2023
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2/5
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Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
(2023)
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Matthew Lickona
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Director Guy Ritchie exercises considerable restraint in his depiction of action: again and again, he is content to pull back, hold the shot, and let what happens be enough to engage the viewer. And again and again, it's more than enough.
Posted Apr 19, 2023
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2/5
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Renfield
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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Robert Kirkman’s story takes its pop psychology seriously, which is what makes its application here so much fun. When Cage bellows, “I’m the real victim here!” anyone who’s ever known a narcissist may find themselves wincing through the grin.
Posted Apr 11, 2023
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0
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Air
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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Nostalgia is the only reason I can think of to explain why old friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reteamed for a movie that so artlessly sets out to make us love shoe company Nike for buttering up a college hoops star better than Adidas or Converse.
Posted Apr 11, 2023
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0/5
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Cocaine Bear
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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Why does the bear kill everyone it meets during its drug rampage except for the one person it decides to kidnap? Why don’t people with guns shoot the bear when they have the chance? Because the movie needs to happen, that’s why!
Posted Mar 03, 2023
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1/5
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Creed III
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
|
The two Final Fight combatants are fearsome and beautiful to behold, and Jordan does his best to get visually creative, but there’s more drama in the training montage — possibly because it’s the only place where his character feels vincible.
Posted Mar 03, 2023
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0/5
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Sharper
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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At one point, circumstances threaten to turn a con-artist caper into something more desperate and dangerous, but here as elsewhere, dramatic urgency is sacrificed in the twisty pursuit of cleverness.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
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0/5
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
|
Matthew Lickona
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And yet, there it was, that thought, overarching and overwhelming: “I didn’t feel a thing.”
Posted Feb 18, 2023
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2/5
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M3GAN
(2022)
|
Matthew Lickona
|
Machine learning may one day be the death of us all, but we’re still far enough out from the Rise of the Machines to indulge a wry chuckle at the prospect.
Posted Jan 13, 2023
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2/5
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Babylon
(2022)
|
Matthew Lickona
|
Long and frequently unpleasant, but at least there’s a point to all that decadence and despair: first time as tragedy, second time as hit musical.
Posted Dec 23, 2022
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1/5
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Empire of Light
(2022)
|
Matthew Lickona
|
Late in the film, Hilary asks projectionist Norman (Toby Young, appealing) why he made a particular momentous decision; his mystified reply may match the viewer’s own as to what Mendes had in mind here.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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2/5
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Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
|
Matthew Lickona
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It would be missing the point to call the proceedings indulgent to the point of self-infatuation: Cameron has built a new world from the remixed bits of this one, and he seems determined that we should not simply visit Pandora, we should live in it.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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3.5/5
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You Resemble Me
(2021)
|
Scott Marks
|
It’s not often that Human Rights Watch sends a narrative feature our way, but when they do it’s a moment worth cherishing.
Posted Jun 06, 2022
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5/5
|
Luzzu
(2021)
|
Scott Marks
|
The film goes exactly where one doesn't expect.
Posted Dec 02, 2021
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2/5
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The Old Ways
(2021)
|
Scott Marks
|
It eventually picks up, but not before dragging us through a number of addiction tropes.
Posted Nov 03, 2021
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|
|
The Conservation Game
(2021)
|
Scott Marks
|
Harrison's approach to getting answers would make the late Mike Wallace proud.
Posted Aug 12, 2021
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3/5
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The Marksman
(2021)
|
Scott Marks
|
Eastwood's former 1st AD-turned-director Robert Lorenz leads with an uncluttered visual style, a respect for his characters framed in juxtaposition with the land that would make his former boss proud.
Posted May 06, 2021
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1/5
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Bhaji on the Beach
(1993)
|
Duncan Shepherd
|
Pleasant enough while it lasts (notwithstanding some overemphatic fantasy scenes, in mockery of the Bombay cinema, and a heavy-handed face-off with a wife-beater), but nothing much to remember the next morning.
Posted Mar 19, 2021
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|
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Ordinary Love
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
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A veritable primer on how to come through a crisis without being crushed under the weight of sentimentality. In Hollywood terms, there is nothing ordinary about this love story.
Posted Feb 20, 2021
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3/5
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The Swerve
(2018)
|
Scott Marks
|
A relentlessly unshakable albeit unpleasant ride, particularly when filmmaker Dean Kapsalis slaloms around audience expectation, something he skillfully accomplishes for the first two-thirds of the picture.
Posted Oct 27, 2020
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3/5
|
Belly of the Beast
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
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Inside the belly of documentarian Erika Cohn's Beast lurks a monstrosity more appalling than horror fiction.
Posted Sep 22, 2020
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3/5
|
Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
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In closing, one must applaud the filmmakers for their wisdom in including the single most important full frontal romp committed to film in the past 20 years: Ken Davitian's nude wrestling match with Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat.
Posted Sep 01, 2020
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4/5
|
The Beach House
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
The film offers no explanations; the horror lies just out of sight, somewhere below the widespread horizon line.
Posted Jul 07, 2020
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4/5
|
Rewind
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
Unquestionably difficult to watch - wait until you learn details of Uncle Harold's "punishment" - Neulinger's heroic act of bravery will hopefully encourage and inspire others to come forward.
Posted Jun 26, 2020
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3/5
|
Working Man
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
First-time director Robert Jury's Working Man finds suspense amidst the humdrum, and love among the rubble of a marriage put on hold.
Posted Jun 16, 2020
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3/5
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Driveways
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
This is one of those quiet gems where we get dropped into the lives of a handful of characters at what turns out to be a crucial turning point in all their lives.
Posted May 14, 2020
|
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2/4
|
GBF
(2013)
|
Scott Marks
|
Director Darren Stein's frequently on-target satire had me laughing enough to keep it interesting.
Posted May 08, 2020
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|
|
Driveways
(2019)
|
Matthew Lickona
|
This is one of those quiet gems where we get dropped into the lives of a handful of characters at what turns out to be a crucial turning point in all their lives.
Posted May 08, 2020
|
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2/5
|
Hansel & Gretel Get Baked
(2013)
|
Scott Marks
|
The gore gets to be a tad gratuitous, but for the most part [Duane] Journey has a ball ripping into genre conventions.
Posted Apr 30, 2020
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2/5
|
Buffaloed
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
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This low rent She-Wolf of Wall Street is not without its charms - it's hard not to find some room in one's heart for a film that works so hard to restore the word "jagoff" to popular usage.
Posted Feb 14, 2020
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4/5
|
The Traitor
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
Show me a classic cosa nostra saga that doesn't affirm the importance of family and... well, I'll show you Marco Bellocchio's The Traitor, everything one hoped The Irishman would be but wasn't.
Posted Feb 14, 2020
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3/5
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The Assistant
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
Green, the first filmmaker to give narrative voice to this subject, posits her day in the life of a witness to workplace gangrene as a grueling example of cinema as frustration.
Posted Feb 14, 2020
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1/5
|
Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
|
One of the most controversial political subjects of his generation is thus afforded an unduly sympathetic portrait - but how else would Pack have been able to get Thomas to sit still long enough for the interview portion of our program?
Posted Feb 01, 2020
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2/5
|
The Last Full Measure
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
Not bad for a regulation military movie, but I must confess to a wandering attention span; how else could I notice the cigarette that Jackson removes from the pack of Marlboros is an American Spirit?
Posted Feb 01, 2020
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The Gentlemen
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
|
Telegraphing dialogue, Tarantino-speak tributes, and a third act plot logjam are tantamount to bringing ants to the picnic, but there's enough repellent on board so as not to bother or distract too much.
Posted Feb 01, 2020
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3/5
|
Cold Case Hammarskjöld
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
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In his own way, the ever-present director is as much a scene-hogger as Joaquin Phoenix with one glaring difference: Brügger's mercenaries are the real-deal, not heavy-handed, makeup-streaked clowns with mommy and daddy issues.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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5/5
|
63 Up
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
At first glance, 21 Up played as somewhat of a novelty. That was over forty years ago. Today, it stands as one of cinema's greatest achievements, a use of the medium that's at once blatantly logical and profoundly affecting.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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3/5
|
The Irishman
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
It didn't take a genius to see that television was finally poised to win the war against movies. I just didn't expect my teacher to be leading the charge against theatrical exhibition.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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5/5
|
Richard Jewell
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
Has there been a time since the Man With No Name first rode into town when Eastwood wasn't at the top of his game? Don't believe me? Check out Richard Jewell.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
|
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1/5
|
Midnight Family
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
At 81 minutes, you won't be bored, but don't be surprised if the car ride home finds you questioning how an audition reel for a reality television program earned a theatrical release.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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|
1/5
|
Earth (Erde)
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
It's a case of the meaningful point in question given a meaningless treatment.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
|
|
2/5
|
Underwater
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
|
There's no better feeling than starting the New Year right with an affectionate, action-packed genre picture.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
|
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3/5
|
Quezon's Game
(2018)
|
Scott Marks
|
It may not always qualify as great cinema, but when it comes to presenting a fascinating, emotionally rewarding history lesson, you'll be hanging on every scene.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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0/5
|
Dolittle
(2020)
|
Scott Marks
|
It is with deep and abiding regret that we report the passing of Robert Downey, Jr. - one of the last of his generation of trailblazers - over to the dark side.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
|
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1/5
|
Just Mercy
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
It's good acting at its finest in this preaching to the choir "right to life" drama that might have worked had the filmmakers chosen to show the audience a little mercy by not constantly talking down to them.
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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0/5
|
The Hottest August
(2019)
|
Scott Marks
|
August 2017 was not the hottest on record. Not even close. If one can't get the title right, what chance is there of everything else falling into order?
Posted Jan 29, 2020
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