Star Wars: The Force Awakens★★★★Opening wide Friday Remember the moment near the end of the original Star Wars when Luke Skywalker piloted his X-wing through a last-ditch run on the Death Star, turning off his targeting computer to rely on the Force instead? That’s what director J.J. Abrams does with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inFilm & Television
Bryan Cranston is Trumbo, a communist screenwriter defying the House Un-American Activities Committee
TRUMBO Now playing Movies are the most powerful tool ever created, and they are infested with traitors!” So says one of the government’s red-blooded commie hunters in Trumbo, the new biographical drama starring Bryan Cranston as the great Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Beginning in the 1940s and wrapping up in the 1970s, the film tells […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Suffragette is a fiery political thriller disguised as a British prestige picture
Suffragette ★★★★ Now playing Those expecting a proper period piece will be sorely disappointed by Suffragette, a restless and angry drama that sometimes plays out like a violent political thriller. The film is set in London, eight years before the 19th Amendment was ratified in the U.S., at the moment when the women’s suffrage movement […]
Posted inFilm & Television
He Named Me Malala unfolds the incredible true story of a Pakistani teenager turned world leader
HE NAMED ME MALALA Opening Friday Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani activist who was shot by the Taliban in 2012, is now an international media figure (you might know her as Jon Stewart’s favorite The Daily Show guest), Nobel laureate and bona fide world leader. Her story is so compelling and extreme that it’s easy […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Apollo 13 meets Cast Away in sci-fi master Ridley Scott’s The Martian
The Martian ★★★ ½ Now playing With its earnest discussions of orbital velocities and hexadecimal alphabets, director Ridley Scott’s The Martian is one nerdy-ass science fiction movie—in a good way. Matt Damon headlines as astronaut Mark Watney, a biologist on the Ares III manned mission to Mars. In a recognizable near future, NASA is properly […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: See ’70s disaster-movie throwback Everest in the theater or not at all
Everest ★★★Opening Friday There are movies you want to see on the big screen if you’re going to see them at all. Big spectacle movies just don’t scale down that well to the screens and speakers of your living-room TV, computer screen or—god help us—mobile device. Everest is just that kind of movie. Based on […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: I see old people! M. Night Shyamalan does the twist in The Visit
The Visit★★★ Now playing Fairly or not, when you go into an M. Night Shyamalan movie, you expect a twist. The director made his bones in Hollywood with 1999’s The Sixth Sense, which features one of the most cleverly obscured script flips in the history of scary movies. Shyamalan’s plot-twist movies since then have usually […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: A surprisingly slapdash adaptation of Bill Bryson’s book A Walk in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods★ ½ Now playing Travel writer Bill Bryson is bored. Semi-retired in a stately New England homestead, he longs for one more grand adventure. Bryson (Robert Redford) stumbles upon his chance when he takes a stroll and discovers that the Appalachian Trail runs right through his neighborhood. Inspired, he decides to […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig vent Millennial anxieties in Mistress America
MISTRESS AMERICA Opening Friday The latest collaboration between director Noah Baumbach and actress Greta Gerwig is a fast and funny indie comedy with a heart of looming darkness. Mistress America is packed with charming, narcissistic people doing reckless, selfish things in the name of self-actualization and creativity. Gerwig plays Brooke, a 30-something New York City […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Not even a shockingly ripped Donnie Darko can punch up Southpaw’s soapy script
Southpaw★★ ½ Now playing Costarring Jake Gyllenhaal and his torso, Southpaw is a technically competent but largely uninteresting boxing movie with the soapiest script this side of the daytime Emmys. The movie’s main appeal is watching Gyllenhaal muscle his way through it with a powerful physical performance. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), Southpaw chronicles […]
