RBG Opening Friday, May 11 RBG, the new documentary chronicling the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is way more fun than it might sound. Surprisingly bouncy and engaging, it charts Ginsburg’s gradual ascension from pioneering legal scholar to eighty-five-year-old pop-culture icon. RBG is one of those rare docs that built enough momentum […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inFilm & Television
Cannes Jury Prize Winner Loveless Leaves a Knot in the Stomach and a Chill in the Blood
LOVELESS Opening Friday, March 30 Loveless, a Russian drama that won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, is a hard, bleak film that leaves a knot in the stomach and a chill in the blood. It’s late in the autumn of 2012, and Muscovites Boris and Zhenya are riding out a brutal divorce. Twelve-year-old […]
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In Japanese Film Oh Lucy!, Dark Comedy and Weird Tragedy Complexly Blend Together
OH LUCY! Opening Friday, March 23 Most movies operate by generating primal feelings: fear, joy, anxiety, amusement. Elicit these in various proportions and your movie will fit into a broad genre, whether it’s horror, comedy, or drama. That’s the usual routine. But some films look past primal feelings to focus on more complicated emotions. They […]
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Movie Review: Lara Croft Jumps Back Into Action in Tomb Raider’s Reboot
Tomb Raider ★★★ ½ Opening Friday, March 16 In 2013, the venerable Tomb Raider video game franchise unveiled its tenth installment in the series, a complete reboot/origin story with a new emphasis on gritty realism and emotional stakes. The new game was clearly designed to retire the persona of the old Lara Croft—a stone-cold fox […]
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Ferenc Török’s 1945 Is a Dark Fable and a History Lesson Wrapped in Fine Cinematic Storytelling
1945 Opening Friday, Feb. 23 A few months after V-E Day, outside a small Hungarian village, two strangers disembark from a train that pours sinister black smoke into the sweltering summer sky. Dressed in somber black suits, the men hire a cart to transport two steamer trunks into the village. Their arrival and the rumored […]
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In Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Annette Bening’s Performance Is a Skillful Tribute to Hollywood’s Golden Age
FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL Opening Friday, Feb. 16 Based on the 1986 memoir by British actor Peter Turner, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool chronicles the final months of actor Gloria Grahame, who charmed audiences in the forties and fifties. Grahame made films with the biggest names in Hollywood, and she won an […]
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The Average American Sees Five Thousand Movies in a Lifetime. Half of Them Come Out This Week.
When a movie comes along that doesn’t behave like any of the thousands of movies you’ve already seen, well, that’s cause for celebration. Such is the case with ‘Downsizing’ from director Alexander Payne.
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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Is a Tame, Bland Beast
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Opening Wednesday, Dec. 20 A reboot of the 1995 adventure pic starring Robin Williams, the new Jumanji revisits the world of the first story, but with a twist. Once again, a group of kids get magically zapped into a game world, but the gimmick is that each kid assumes the […]
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In The Disaster Artist, James Franco Does a Suspiciously Good Impression of a Bad Artist, but the Point Eludes Us
THE DISASTER ARTIST Opening Friday, Dec. 8 In 2003, a shady Hollywood creature named Tommy Wiseau wrote, directed, and starred in an independent film called The Room. It’s generally considered to be one of the worst films ever made, in both concept and execution. Still, in the years since its release, The Room has achieved […]
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Dickens and His Characters All Come to Life in the Pleasant Holiday Surprise The Man Who Invented Christmas
Opening Wednesday, Nov. 22 This pleasant holiday surprise is a heartfelt, clever British import that tells the story of Charles Dickens writing the classic yuletide novella A Christmas Carol. Similar to Goodbye Christopher Robin, the recent drama about A. A. Milne, The Man Who Invented Christmas purports to reveal the details behind a literary phenomenon. […]