Passengers ★★ ½ Now playing Exhibit 2001 for the proposition that a bad ending can ruin an otherwise good movie: Passengers, a glossy interstellar vehicle for some provocative moral entanglements that ultimately implodes from the pressure of its star-driven, crowd-pleasing mission. The film’s December release date suggests it once harbored awards-season aspirations. Instead, it just […]
Neil Morris
Posted inFilm & Television
In Jackie, Natalie Portman Gives Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Everything She’s Got
JACKIE ½ Opening Wednesday, December 21 Life magazine’s famous interview with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a week after President John Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, serves as a framing device in Jackie, director Pablo Larraín’s biopic. It seems to promise to portray a strong, independent woman, derided and underestimated by her critics as “some silly little debutante,” […]
Posted inFilm & Television
In La La Land, the Director of Whiplash Confects a Golden-Age Hollywood Musical with Breezy Charm
LA LA LAND Opening Sunday, Dec. 25 Denied a best-picture Oscar for Whiplash, writer-director Damien Chazelle again explores the conflict between ambition and humanity in La La Land, this time turning to the tried-and-true award bait of the self-referential film set in Hollywood. It’s a romance, but its lesson is decidedly bittersweet: true love is […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The Quotidian and the Tragic Mingle Beautifully in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA Opening Friday, Dec. 9 ½ As we first meet Boston apartment complex handyman Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) in Manchester by the Sea, the latest from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan, Lee is rolling his eyes while a tenant debates whether to replace a stopper or install a new toilet. Then Lee curses out […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Sexual Tension and Spousal Spying in Nostalgic World War II Flick Allied
ALLIED ½ Now playing The only unexpected part of Allied is that director Robert Zemeckis didn’t shoot it in black and white. The film is so steeped in the glossy nostalgia of World War II romance movies that it actually spends its opening act in Casablanca, which is littered with Nazis, no less. But any […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: Barry Jenkins’s Exquisite Moonlight Is a Meditative Character Study at the Nexus of Black Masculinity and Homosexuality
Moonlight ★★★★ Now playing Color looms large in Moonlight. The film is adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, and two characters are called Black and Blue. According to IndieWire, director Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton adjusted the lighting contrast to emphasize the skin tones of the African-American cast. […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: The Communication Gap in Arrival Feels Painfully Relevant in America Right Now
Arrival ★★★★ Now playing This week, Americans sought to speak using the common language of the ballot. Now half the country is celebrating the arrival of an iconoclastic new leader, while the other half is gripped with despondency and even fear. It’s hard not to think about this when watching Arrival, an aliens-to-Earth film that’s […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: Doctor Strange’s Feisty Magic Cape Is the Most Developed Character in His Movie
Doctor Strange ★★★ Now playing Held together by countless terabytes of computer effects, fortune cookie wisdom, and the backing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange is an origin story that’s high on origin yet low on story. It features a hero you don’t particularly like, a villain who’s not well defined, and ephemeral stakes […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: In Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson Clearly Identifies with the Religious Persecution of Conscientious Objector Desmond Doss
Hacksaw Ridge★★★ ½ Opening Friday, Nov. 4 The history of cinema is littered with films that serve as allegories for the real-life persecution of their writers/directors. On the Waterfront is widely viewed as Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan’s retort to those who objected to them naming names before the House Un-American Activities Commission. By contrast, […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: The Accountant’s Autistic Assassin Doesn’t Quite Add Up
The Accountant ★★★ Now playing It’s hard not to see similarities between The Accountant and some prior films featuring its star’s best bud, Matt Damon. Fourteen years after Damon first launched Jason Bourne, Ben Affleck trots out his own taciturn anti-hero with a neurological condition and a murky past, carrying out violent missions with robotic […]