A bad nurse rising: Horrifying true story becomes chilling thriller
ICU night shift nursing colleagues Charlie (Eddie Redmayne) and Amy (Jessica Chastain) become close friends.
Anyone who has ever spent any significant time in a hospital knows how much blind faith patients put in the medical staff. You’re sick or injured and helpless and scared: you not only trust the doctors and nurses caring for you, but you’re beyond grateful to them for helping you get healthy and back to your life. But what if a nurse didn’t have your best interest at heart, but the exact opposite? Suddenly the hospital would no longer be a safe space of healing and comfort, but a house of horrors. Such is the chilling premise of the terrific new film The Good Nurse.
Look! Up in the air! It’s a benignly entertaining ballooning movie!
Aeronauts James (Eddie Redmayne) and Amelia (Felicity Jones) try to break the world’s height record for a gas-powered balloon.
As far as family-friendly holiday movies go, you could do worse than British writer/director Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts. An old-fashioned Victorian costume drama, it’s thrilling without being scary, has no sex, swearing, or violence, and extolls the virtues of science, adventure, and reaching for the stars, as it were. And sure, you may forget about it as soon as you walk out of the theater, but you’ll have a pleasant enough time watching its story unfold.
Fantastic beasts are plentiful in this magical yet slightly subpar re-intro to a familiar wizarding world.
Newt and a Fantastic Beast…and Dan Fogler.
I want a fantastic beast of my own! I’m incredibly relieved that there are moments in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that made me wish the wizarding world was real, and that I was privy to it. (I guess if I wasn’t privy to it, I wouldn’t know if it was real.) Anyway, one of the most wonderful characteristics of the Harry Potter books and early films was the wonder and charm they emitted. Sadly, as the trio of young wizards grew up, the plots became less warm and wondrous and more cold, pale, and dark. David Yates directed the final four Harry Potter films, and he’s back in the helm for the first return to that universe since 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. This return, the first installment of a new Fantastic Beasts series, isn’t as light and funny as The Sorcerer’s Stone, so despite a five year wait-time since the last movie (and 15 since the first), it’s very reminiscent of the dark Deathly Hallows. Part of this is due to the main characters being in their adulthood to start, so the inexperience and innocence of young wizards isn’t front and center. Another part is due to the 1920s New York setting of Fantastic Beasts — whereas most of the Harry Potter series took place in and around Hogwarts and fantastical woodland areas. And this new story is also a bit weaker than the initial Harry Potter entry. Needless to say, there are many reasons why Fantastic Beasts doesn’t capture the charm and magical pull of the original Harry Potter films, yet the beasts and characters fit right in to the world we’ve been missing for half a decade.
Film critics Carrie and Chad on who will – and who should – win the 87th Academy Awards
The 87th Academy Awards air this Sunday, February 22nd on ABC at 5:00pm PST (red carpet coverage begins at 4:00, if you want to dish on fashion highs and lows). There are some tight races this year – Best Picture and Best Actor are especially hard to call. Here are Carrie and Chad’s predictions – and hopes – for the major categories: Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie and Chad Pick the Oscars”
Channing Tatum “surfing” around shooting and being shot at.
There’s a line in Jupiter Ascending where a former alien soldier stationed on Earth tells a newly-discovered woman of royalty, “Bees don’t lie.” With or without context, you should get a sense of how ridiculous this sounds, because it is. Completely. Ridiculous. Jupiter Ascending, from the Wachowskis, whose credibility is descending rapidly, is a silly overwrought mess. Too much is packed into too complex a premise. The tone shifts back and forth between silly and serious, imaginative and derivative, from The Fifth Element to Dune (minus the intelligence). When a movie gets pushed from a summer tentpole position (May-July) to the cinema graveyard shift (January-February), it’s obvious that something is wrong. In the case of Jupiter Ascending, it has all the makings of a sci fi summer blockbuster, but fails to execute on all fronts aside from some nifty special effects that look quite pretty.
