|
3/5
|
The Wolf Man
(1941)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Ironically, The Wolf Man is stronger and creepier in the scenes without the wolf man.
Posted Apr 13, 2020
|
|
2/5
|
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
(2019)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Where'd You Go Bernadette is Linklater's 19th feature film, and it's also his worst.
Posted Dec 26, 2019
|
|
4/5
|
Toy Story 4
(2019)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Nobody except the suits at Disney clamored for a fourth Toy Story movie, and yet Pixar somehow made an unnecessary sequel that feels indispensable.
Posted Dec 26, 2019
|
|
2/5
|
Avengers: Endgame
(2019)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Avengers: Infinity War at least had the good taste to abstain from Jeremy Renner. No such luck in Endgame.
Posted Dec 26, 2019
|
|
4/5
|
Little Women
(2019)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Writer-director Greta Gerwig makes the material feel vital and modern, delivering an equally challenging and crowd-pleasing movie.
Posted Dec 26, 2019
|
|
2.5/5
|
The Hero
(2017)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Elliott is as magnetic as ever, but very little here feels authentic.
Posted Sep 28, 2019
|
|
4/5
|
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
(2019)
|
Bob Grimm
|
The interviews flesh out the "story" in what amounts to another triumph for Scorsese, who has given himself a nice side gig doing rock documentaries.
Posted Jul 05, 2019
|
|
|
Ken Burns: The Civil War
(2015)
|
Christopher Allan Smith
|
The best documentary series this country has produced.
Posted May 24, 2019
|
|
3/5
|
Ghetto
(2002)
|
Jim Lane
|
Posted Jan 29, 2019
|
|
1/5
|
Holmes & Watson
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
The smell of flop-sweat permeates the movie like real sweat in a locker room. It's too bad to be offensive, too inert to be annoying.
Posted Jan 10, 2019
|
|
3/5
|
Second Act
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
The cast is good enough -- if not to pull it off, at least to make it go down painlessly. Charlyne Yi supplies fun as half-phobic, half-kinky office drone.
Posted Jan 10, 2019
|
|
3/5
|
Bumblebee
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
To the surprise of no one, the removal of Michael Bay from the creative driver's seat of the franchise results in a sharp rise in visual coherence and a sharp dip in toxic masculinity.
Posted Jan 03, 2019
|
|
2/5
|
On the Basis of Sex
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
The flavorless, barely tolerable non-drama of On the Basis of Sex was probably intended as good-for-you movie medicine, but if this is the cure, I'll take my chances with the disease.
Posted Jan 03, 2019
|
|
3/5
|
Aquaman
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
It's campy and miles over the top, but fun in its loopy wouldn't-it-be-cool-to-breathe-under-water way.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
1/5
|
A Wrinkle in Time
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
A garish and empty non-spectacle.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
|
Mary Poppins Returns
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Sure to charm all but the most churlish cynic, it is, like Mary Poppins herself, practically perfect in every way.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
You Were Never Really Here
(2017)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Lynne Ramsay's scarred and fractured story of a violent, demon-plagued veteran who rescues stolen girls.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
The Death of Stalin
(2017)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Already the premier political satirist of his era, Armando Iannucci pulls off his most impressive feat yet, turning the corpse-strewn power struggle that followed Joseph Stalin's sudden death into a lacerating and disturbingly relevant farce.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
4.5/5
|
Mandy
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
The prog-metal outrageousness of Mandy is established when King Crimson's "Starless" both plays over and gets listed in the opening credits, while Nicolas Cage offers his once-a-decade reminder of why we ever cared.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
Cold War
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Much like the folk songs heard throughout the film, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's romantic tragedy takes a story of heartbreak and horror and transforms it into something beautiful and timeless.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Welcome to Marwen
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
It's technically brilliant and very well-acted -- especially by Leslie Mann as Hogancamp's new neighbor and latest crush -- but it never quite attains the emotional punch it's aiming for.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
1/5
|
Green Book
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Mahershala Ali survives with a shred of dignity intact, but Viggo Mortensen may never recover.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
The Mule
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
As we might expect from an 88-year-old superstar filmmaker with nothing left to prove, the movie has an elegiac, farewell quality to it, and Eastwood moves gingerly through it with an air of leathery frailty.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
If Beale Street Could Talk
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
At its best, If Beale Street Could Talk is lovely cinematic poetry, but the film is rarely at its best.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
2/5
|
Vice
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
McKay wants to demonize and humanize Cheney at the same time, and the effect is like simultaneously watching ten different Dick Cheney biopics, all of them tedious.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
|
|
3.5/5
|
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
It sucks that almost every movie is a self-aware pastiche and brand nostalgia compilation, but if the only stories that Hollywood can weave anymore are Easter egg baskets, it would be nice if more of them had this film's energy, artistry, heart and humor.
Posted Dec 20, 2018
|
|
3.5/5
|
Roma
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
It offers an increasingly rare combination of ambition, imagination, compassion, emotion and execution.
Posted Dec 20, 2018
|
|
2.5/5
|
Vox Lux
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Vox Lux does not lack for lofty aspirations, but the human drama is muddled and the observations on contemporary culture are obvious and exploitative.
Posted Dec 20, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
Green Book
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Take a true story, add a super-smart script, brilliant turns by the two stars, and matching support from Linda Cardellini as Mortensen's wife, and you get a bullseye crowd-pleaser.
Posted Dec 13, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
The Favourite
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Lanthimos takes a lean and witty script about conniving women and weak men and imbues it with his own peculiar and pitiless absurdism. The result feels like an outrageously opulent cross between Dangerous Liaisons and All About Eve.
Posted Dec 13, 2018
|
|
2.5/5
|
Boy Erased
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Only another impressive turn from Lucas Hedges elevates this earnest but slipshod drama above the level of an after-school special.
Posted Dec 06, 2018
|
|
2.5/5
|
At Eternity's Gate
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Schnabel tries to give new life to familiar material through a self-conscious naturalism full of hand-held camera shots, long takes and lens flares. Unfortunately, this breath of fresh air eventually turns stale.
Posted Dec 06, 2018
|
|
2/5
|
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
[Rowling's] script here is the worst thing she's ever written -- incomprehensible if you haven't seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, saddling the actors with endless pages of indigestible exposition, an inert, lifeless set-up for the next movie.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
1/5
|
Robin Hood
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
"Forget history," says the narration, "Forget what you think you know." Better advice would be to forget this godawful movie.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
|
Ralph Breaks the Internet
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
It's all too clever by half -- or rather, by about 20 minutes; its feathery charms are hard put to support nearly two hours' running time.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
4/5
|
Widows
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Davis' powerhouse presence is complemented by Rodriguez and Debicki (in a starmaking turn), plus an equally powerhouse supporting cast.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Maria by Callas: In Her Own Words
(2017)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
The life of world-famous 20th-century opera singer Maria Callas gets the Amy treatment in this serviceable documentary.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
2/5
|
Creed II
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Whatever you think about Rocky IV, it is inarguably a mid-1980s time capsule. Creed II isn't a time capsule, but it should get buried.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
1.5/5
|
The Front Runner
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
The Front Runner is unbelievably naive in its cynicism about the tabloidization of the political process, ultimately (and possibly by accident because of ineptitude) making an anti-transparency argument that would appease the "fake news" dingbats.
Posted Nov 29, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Dr. Seuss' The Grinch
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
The smoothly animated result isn't as dreadful as the Jim Carrey live-action version, but it's almost as wrong-headed.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
The Girl in the Spider's Web
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Alvarez doesn't let us linger to make sense of it all; he keeps the action set-pieces coming, and if we're never fully engaged, at least we're never bored.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
|
|
2/5
|
Instant Family
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
The movie has amusing moments, but they feel prepackaged with everything but a sitcom laugh track.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
The Happy Prince
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Everett the writer sometimes overplays things, while Everett the director lurches from one martyrdom to the next in a sort of pity-party promenade. But Everett the actor, in a role he was born to play, never makes a false move.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
|
|
2.5/5
|
Overlord
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
Julius Avery directs this high-energy, low-imagination genre mashup, a combination of Inglourious Basterds and Planet Terror that is not nearly as fun as that description might imply.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Prospect
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
A high-concept film that doesn't explain itself to death is refreshing, but the margins of Prospect are far more interesting than the central story and characters.
Posted Nov 09, 2018
|
|
2.5/5
|
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
(2018)
|
Daniel Barnes
|
The film twists itself in knots to make Israel seem like the victim of her own crimes, but this mainly amounts to McCarthy moping around in a Kathy Geiss haircut.
Posted Nov 08, 2018
|
|
|
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Either desperate rewrites by Tom McCarthy and reshoots with director Joe Johnston taking over from Lasse Hallström didn't help -- or the movie must have been really awful before. Now it's a grab bag of remnants from far better books and movies,
Posted Nov 08, 2018
|
|
2/5
|
Nobody's Fool
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Writer-director Tyler Perry throws all kinds of ideas at us, but he never manages to get over the basic problem at the center of his script: Sumpter's character is shallow and unlikeable, while Haddish's... wears out her welcome in record time.
Posted Nov 08, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Hunter Killer
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
Muscular direction by Donovan Marsh keeps the action tense and clipping along, compensating somewhat for a tendency of minor characters to blur together.
Posted Nov 01, 2018
|
|
3/5
|
Bohemian Rhapsody
(2018)
|
Jim Lane
|
A standard musical biopic with all the conventions in place... Still, the music is electrifying, and Malek is a stellar presence, as is Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin.
Posted Nov 01, 2018
|
