It may seem sarcastic or strange to praise a movie for having an unengaging story to tell, but in the case of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, its lack of reliance on narrative is precisely its saving grace. Thanks to unnecessary yet spectacular attention to detail, unrelenting technical perfectionism and a pathological commitment to discarding […]
Attention all Star Wars fans who were disturbed by their lack of faith in Disney’s ability to do right by its recent acquisition of Lucasfilm: You may now breathe a sigh of relief. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the movie we thought we were getting back when we whipped ourselves into a collective frenzy […]
Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea is a very special kind of good. Sometimes it’s slow, it often decides to invest more screen time in places you’d rather weren’t in the movie at all, and many of the characters are too thin for a story as profound as it hopes to be. But […]
Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq is not a film with a message. It’s not an allegorical tale of tragedy with unstated yet entrenched sociopolitical implications made so Hollywood could pat itself on the back for its good conscience. Chi-Raq is a wake-up call in a world that seems increasingly determined to repeat the mistakes of history while […]
Let Trumbo be the textbook example for future generations to distinguish between a good story with fine performances and snappy dialogue, and a good film. An entirely familiar period piece whose best attributes are reduced to window dressing, Trumbo is certainly not an unpleasant experience, but one drastically in need of a reduction in either […]
Arguably the first all-around good film to be released in time for Oscar season, Spotlight is predictably solid in most measurable ways, with one exceptional quality buried so far beneath the surface, perhaps imperceptible to anyone who does not live and work in the world of Boston media, that it’s difficult to tell if director […]
On August 5, 2010, a catastrophic collapse occurred deep within the heart of a mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó, Chile, with 33 miners still inside. Concern and hope for their safety spread in equal measure, first from the miners’ families, then to the Chilean government and presidency, then to Spanish-language media, until finally […]
If you’ve ever gone into work while sick only because you ran out of paid leave, the feeling your boss had while reviewing your half-assed job is a reasonable approximation of what most Bond fans will experience while watching the once-bulletproof team of director Sam Mendes and star Daniel Craig phone it in for Spectre. […]
Just when it was beginning to look like 2015 would not have a better choice for worst movie than The Boy Next Door, along comes the over-plotted, under-conceived and thoroughly charming Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter. Although the negative reviews are sure to be somewhat accurate—Diesel’s performance is too smirky and wooden to […]
As tempting as it is to call the ghostly gothic romance Crimson Peak a return to form for writer-director Guillermo del Toro, let’s take a moment to truly appreciate his role in shaping the movie-going experience as we know it today. It’s been nine years since Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro’s dark fantasy that got surprising, […]