As advertised, total escapist fun. The new droid is adorable, the sets are intriguing, the weird characters, humanoid and not, are engaging, and the story is ageless. The female lead is commendable: she’s strong, smart, has a British accent and is not required to show cleavage. Everyone else is adequate, but the movie comes alive […]
“How bad can a Quentin Tarantino movie be?,” we asked ourselves. The answer, it turns out, is “worst movie of the year, and most pretentious movie of the century.” It starts with a boring “Overture” by Ennio Morricone, just to link Tarantino with the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. It’s shot in Panavision 70 and […]
A splendid period piece and a beautiful companion to Brooklyn, as the story of a young woman coming into her identity, here, her forbidden sexuality. Rooney Mara was wide-eyed and as captivating as she was captivated, her resemblance to Audrey Hepburn unmistakable in shot after shot. Cate Blanchett was elegant and austere, and if she seemed […]
A financial primer on the 2008 mortgage meltdown dressed up as a movie, with outsized performances, frenetic cutting and comic asides apparently intended to spice up a subject the movie-going public either wouldn’t understand or would find too dull. The worst were the two goofballs from Colorado, but blustering Steve Carrell and how-weird-can-he-be Christian Bale […]
This was more of a press release than a documentary, as there was no story, unless you count Noma’s regaining its position as #1 restaurant in the world in the unexplained but totally unscientific annual contest now sponsored by San Pellegrino. Potential subplots emerged – how “Nordic cuisine” was invented from locally sourced ingredients; how […]
Ersatz to the heart would be more like it, starting with Chris Hemsworth’s take on Matt Damon’s Boston accent, running through every painted backdrop and whale sighting and going ultimately to the movie’s core – the idea that Moby Dick emerged from Herman Melville’s late-night interview of the last survivor of the Essex. Once again, historical details […]
It would be hard to make a dull movie about Peggy Guggenheim’s life, what with her eccentric family, love affairs with artists and, finally, her world-class museum of Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist art in beautiful Venice, but this effort teetered. It started with the worst opening credits I have ever sat through, spread out over […]
A Spielbergian look at a Cold War incident, replete with recitations of the Constitution and what it means to be an American. Who better to present the message than uber-vanilla-good guy Tom Hanks, who, alas, seemed very unlikely as a tough-lawyer negotiator. Not only was I not convinced that his character could have pulled off […]
Janis Joplin was a phenomenon of a time and place – specifically, San Francisco USA in 1969, give or take. Unfortunately, viewed in retrospect, I don’t really like her music, her looks or her persona. While much the same could be said of Amy Winehouse, that documentary had a societal depth that Janis lacked and […]
No boxing-movie-cliche goes unturned in this Rocky sequel, but the film is so genial and so devoid of any pretense of originality that you really don’t hold that against it. Stallone, especially, is so subdued – an actor with nothing to prove, probably more invested in his producing – that he’s good company onscreen. Michael B. […]
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