The will to survive is the single most primal instinct in our nature, one that strips away all of the things we use to define ourselves as individuals. Adrift, based on a true story, follows Tami (Shailene Woodley) and Richard (Sam Claflin) on their struggle to find either land or rescue as they float aimlessly […]
Like its title character, Solo: A Star Wars Story often threatens to go wildly off track and ruin everything it has going for it, before it comes back with charm and skill, ready to save the day despite its rough edges. The second, after Rogue One, of the so-called Star Wars anthology films—stories that take […]
With Deadpool 2, the deconstruction becomes the norm. That’s not necessarily a bad thing given how bloated and redundant the X-Men franchise has become, and how terrifically its predecessor broke every taboo while delivering a solid film with a real story of its own. But how do you skewer yourself when you’ve become the new […]
Credit is due to Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy for their efforts to inject meaningful emotions into broad comedies without punching down or relying on unwarranted meanness for their punchlines. But it would help if those punchlines were funny. Back in 2013, their collaboration on Tammy used McCarthy’s star power to tell a sweet story […]
It’s easy to reduce your identity to before and after you have children when your whole life feels like one long haze of sleepless nights and diaper changes. But what happened to the person who came before? Do they cease to be? How do you reconcile who you’ve become with who you were when your […]
Cutting right to the chase, Avengers: Infinity War is pretty damn good and may even be unpredictable for the Easter egg-hunting, online theory crowd —but how the hell do you even begin to describe a movie like this? Installment to installment, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies work more or less as individual stories with just […]
Though Broken Lizard found mixed critical and financial results with its subsequent follow-ups to the 2001 cult hit Super Troopers, you do have to hand it to the guys for wanting to try something different before coming back around to the property that launched their film and TV careers. The underrated Club Dread was perhaps […]
There’s really only one way to sell the story of a Special Forces veteran and anti-poaching commando turned conservationist who’s helping his overgrown gorilla friend overcome anger issues to stop a flying porcupine-wolf and a crocodile-leviathan from destroying Chicago: completely straight-faced. And if there’s one face in the movie business capable of that level of […]
A dialogue of national reconciliation takes the form of a courtroom drama in Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult, one of this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. It all begins as a minor conflict between a Lebanese Christian mechanic, Tony (Adel Karam), and a Palestinian engineer living in Beirut, Yasser (Kamel El Basha). Yasser is […]
Before we get into just how much Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One misses the mark, it’s worth noting that its badness has nothing to do with video games and the people who enjoy them. Critics often come down harder on movies about subcultures they disapprove of or simply haven’t taken the time to understand, which […]