If Peter Berg was more interested in emulating Michael Mann than Michael Bay, Mile 22 might be something. An international thriller based around getting a high-value asset from point A to point B through extremely hostile territory within a very narrow window should be exciting from beginning to end, a claustrophobic story in the open […]
Don’t judge The Spy Who Dumped Me by its first 20 minutes, because if you bail on what seems like another forgettable high-concept frenemy gross-out fest, you’ll miss the best hard-R comedy of the year since Game Night. Fueled by the terrific chemistry between stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon and deftly directed by Susanna […]
Denzel, by his presence alone, has the ability to make a bad movie good and a good movie great, and director Antoine Fuqua is best known for swinging for the stylistic fences on even the most boring dud of a story. That shared enthusiasm for craftsmanship is part of what made their previous collaborations on […]
Revolutions are always messy affairs, and so is revolutionary art. But without the trailblazing, reckless spirit of innovation and true inspiration, you don’t get works of originality and beauty like Sorry to Bother You, the debut film from writer-director, musician and overall Renaissance man Boots Riley of The Coup. Riley’s vision is a wide-ranging one, […]
Credit to those responsible for the Purge series for recognizing its potential for redemption. What began as yet another movie with a promising premise but disappointing execution has become the ultimate vessel for social and political commentary in our age of stratification. The First Purge is, fittingly, the first one in the series to be […]
The U.S. government’s current definition of terrorism, according to Sicario: Day of the Soldado’s Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine), is the use of violence to achieve political ends. Riley says this to mercenary Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who has just come back from Somalia where he killed a man’s brother as an interrogation […]
Why is it that sequels so bent on continuing stories and fleshing out backstories are much more confusing? It’s a curious thing that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom places such a high premium on plot continuity with little regard for why anyone liked Jurassic Park in the first place. What began as a visually thrilling summer […]
Is a bad movie made better because it’s funny, or is a funny movie made worse because it’s bad? And if it’s occasionally hilarious but totally dead in the water otherwise, what are you left with? So it is with Tag, a totally disposable, predictable, unfunny rehashing of tired tropes and gags we’ve seen done […]
Ari Aster’s Hereditary may be the best, scariest, and most effective American horror film in years. Not because it has the loudest scares, not because its ghosts have the creepiest faces, and not because its deaths are the most gruesome (though it does have its share). Writer-director Aster’s feature film debut builds dread at an […]
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 […]