Call it an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s breakthrough “Victorian realist” romance novel, call it a remake of John Schlesinger’s 1967 film starring Julie Christie, but whatever you do, don’t call Thomas Vinterberg’s Far from the Madding Crowd derivative. Like Hardy and Schlesinger before him, Vinterberg uses the relatively straightforward tale of an independent-minded woman caught […]
Call it an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s breakthrough “Victorian realist” romance novel, call it a remake of John Schlesinger’s 1967 film starring Julie Christie, but whatever you do, don’t call Thomas Vinterberg’s Far from the Madding Crowd derivative. Like Hardy and Schlesinger before him, Vinterberg uses the relatively straightforward tale of an independent-minded woman caught […]
Has the point of every Marvel movie become nothing more than to plug the next Marvel movie? So it would seem with Avengers: Age of Ultron, a perfectly enjoyable actioner that is part sequel to 2012’s megahit but mostly prequel to whatever Marvel has planned next. The winning formula of its predecessor is back, as […]
Nearly a century after the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-1916, the national consciousness of both Turkey and Australia remain intertwined. The lingering effects of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) campaign led directly to the rise of the Turkish Nationalist Movement, while Anzac Day is considered a commemoration of a defining moment in Australian […]
There is a sliding scale of effectiveness for movies based on true stories. At the upper end are films like Lawrence of Arabia, Goodfellas or City of God, where gifted artists at the top of their game have found meaning and inspiration in someone else’s life and have bent the facts in order to get […]
The Longest Ride, like all Nicholas Sparks movies, is overlong, contrived and blatant in its pandering. Yet by being one of the most preposterous Sparks adaptations yet—a mishmash of pop-country neo-Americana with Barry Levinson-esque nostalgia and good old-fashioned sexy wish fulfillment—there is enjoyment (or at least begrudging respect) to be found in how openly and […]
The redemption of The Fast and The Furious series, from critical punching bag to national treasure so late in the game, is something of a minor miracle with few equivalents in movie history. Think back to the mid-2000s when each new release was met with disbelief and jokes about its increasingly contrived titles that awkwardly […]
Was prison rape even funny to begin with? The team behind Get Hard seems to think it’s the funniest thing in the world, maybe the only thing that’s ever been funny. A few jokes here and there are to be expected—though it’ll be nice, not to mention not gross, when we no longer delight at […]
There are bad movies, there are really bad movies, there are atrocities committed against the intelligence of paying crowds that call themselves movies, and then there’s The Gunman. Watching it will make you forget that movies that aren’t this bad exist at all. It’s so godawful that even calling it bad is an insult to […]
There is a sneaky sort of rebelliousness in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella—in the way it pushes back against the tide of revisionism and misdirected irony that has overtaken family entertainment in recent years. Sincere instead of sarcastic, elegant instead of flashy, and wishing to enchant audiences with charm instead of hypnotizing them with antics, Branagh’s intentions […]
From start to finish, everything about the Chappie experience is a pleasant surprise. Yes, Neill Blomkamp’s story of a police robot in the near future who becomes sentient can be viewed as a synthesis of Short Circuit and RoboCop, but the film gets the more familiar plot elements out of the way in the first […]