This seems to be the buzz-generator of early summer, but that speaks more to the paucity of good movies than BD’s merits. Anson Elgort’s moves and cool are appealing, and Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm are wonderfully scary bad guys, but that’s about it. The soundtrack is loud and unrelenting but doesn’t make much sense, […]
Fine acting by Salma Hayek and John Lithgow overcame a shaky plot premise to let us enjoy a roundelay of cleverly caricatured dinner guests. It is easy to read the movie as a parable of Democratic versus Republican values with an unfortunate ending, but the pleasures along the way were smaller, like hearing what cocktails […]
Silly fun, marred for me by a climactic battle that was befuddling, overlong and beyond absurd. Until then I could enjoy the comic-book characters, especially Chris Pine, and the cinematically familiar settings of World War I trenches, British cabinet meetings and German evil. Gal Gadot got better-looking as the movie progressed, which was good because […]
A feminine thriller in full Southern Gothic mode, Sofia Coppola turns the cinematic tables with an almost all-female cast lusting in their separate ways for the hunky Union soldier dropped into their laps. Calling it a period piece is an understatement, as Coppola pulls out the beautiful dresses, the dripping Spanish moss, the candlelit chandeliers […]
In the end, Norman the fixer’s dealmaking pays off for all his friends through his ultimate self-sacrifice, and he ironically achieves the goal of his nemesis, the Israeli Justice Department official, by doing something that makes the world a better place. Or, more likely, all the good things shown on screen are happening in Norman’s […]
Totally satisfactory as a tribute to the Grateful Dead, four hours of archival footage and talking heads from the band and fans. Of course, the soundtrack was one happy thrill after another. Seeing it in a full house of Deadheads in Greenwich Village, with director Amir Bar-Lev present, made it more a pilgrimage than a […]
Seen amid a slew of Broadway productions, it was refreshing to enter a world of real people, real situations and real emotions. Not that the affairs seemed terribly real – it was hard to see what the respective individuals saw in each other – but the characters portrayed by Debra Winger and Tracy Letts were […]
The month before the Tony Awards we checked into the New York theater scene with a vengeance. I can’t say we’ve been overwhelmed so far – seven down, two shows to go – but we’ve mainly had a good time. I think in the future, though, I will be a little less taken in by […]
Supposedly based on a novel, The Lost City of Z seemed more likely to have been based on a comic book. The lack of sophistication and subtlety in plot and acting was on a par with Brad Pitt’s performances in, inter alia Inglorious Basterds and, more recently, Allied. Imagine my lack of surprise, then, when […]
A totally fun horror film, with just the right amount of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo and tension-breaking humor. Allison Williams is charming, until she isn’t; Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford are wonderfully debonair parents, until hell breaks loose. The racially charged setup – white girl bringing black boyfriend home for the weekend – adds tension and a […]
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