Arts Culture

The five worst films of 2024

When we asked our Screens columnist, Justin Humphreys to do a round-up of the year’s movies, he made his feelings clear: “I’m going to have to be very honest and say how precious few good movies there were this year.”  His top five losers are below. Joker Folie a Deux Nicknamed Joker Filet-o-Fish online, few […]

Justin Humphreys | December 18, 2024

Arts Culture

Bloody but unbowed

Australian director George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga traces the origin story of the hit Mad Max: Fury Road’s heroine, Imperator Furiosa (with Anya Taylor-Joy in the role originated by Charlize Theron). Even though Max only appears for a brief cameo, this is a superior prequel that delivers everything viewers expect from the Mad […]

Justin Humphreys | June 12, 2024

Arts Culture

Back to basic

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black details the short, volcanic life of pop star Amy Winehouse. It’s a by-the-numbers music biopic that is mostly unremarkable, with the exception of the film’s cast. Marisa Abela as Winehouse and Jack O’Connell as her husband Blake Fielder-Civil give performances that intensely enliven the film. Winehouse died at age […]

Justin Humphreys | May 22, 2024

Arts Culture

Rockets’ red glare

Alex Garland’s newest film Civil War presents a vision of a war-torn, near-future United States that taps into many Americans’ fears of the worst-case endgame of ever-growing political divisiveness. It’s a promising idea, but this uneven movie is loaded with ridiculous plot holes, and despite delivering several impressive scenes, the film doesn’t maintain its level […]

Justin Humphreys | April 24, 2024

Arts Culture

Army of the ordinary

Director James Hawes’ One Life does justice to the moving, true story of modest World War II hero Nicholas Winton, a London stockbroker who rescued hundreds of children from the Nazis. Based on the book, If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, by his daughter Barbara, the film is deeply compelling, even […]

Justin Humphreys | March 27, 2024

Arts Culture

Master vs. apprentice

Longtime Albemarle County resident Jack Fisk ranks among movie-making’s greatest production designers. His current Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is well-deserved. Another frontrunner in the category, Ruth De Jong, is nominated for her work on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. De Jong’s cinematic path to designing acclaimed […]

Justin Humphreys | March 6, 2024

Arts Culture

Goth primer

Director Zelda Williams’ horror comedy Lisa Frankenstein is a mediocre pastiche of older films with an uneven storyline stitched together from overly familiar macabre material. The film will appeal mainly to teens who are only just beginning to discover its sources, but to longtime moviegoers, it plays like ersatz Tim Burton, admittedly with occasionally hilarious […]

Justin Humphreys | February 21, 2024

Arts Culture

Starvation diet

Director-co-screenwriter J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow is a well-made, engrossing story of survival told straightforwardly and conventionally. The film deftly depicts a horrifying, real-life tragedy and, although it is vivid, it avoids being sordid. In October 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to Chile, carrying a rugby team of young men and some of […]

Justin Humphreys | January 17, 2024

Arts Culture

Godzilla 1, Tokyo 0

Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One is easily among 2023’s most engaging, exciting, and poignant films. This isn’t some pulp monster movie to be casually dismissed by snobs—it’s a compelling post-World War II drama that periodically features a monster rearing its huge head, and it gives its big, scaly, radioactive leading man his […]

Justin Humphreys | December 20, 2023

Arts Culture

The emperor strikes out

Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon covers the well-worn territory of the titular French emperor’s monumental military conquests and eventual downfall. Scott’s battle sequences are undeniably extraordinary, and it’s gorgeous overall, but mediocre dialogue and Joaquin Phoenix’s dull title performance noticeably weaken the film. Scott opens Napoleon with a climax: a bold sequence depicting the beheading […]

Justin Humphreys | December 6, 2023