Category: Films

Film Review: The Post

Spielberg brilliantly brings First Amendment showdown to life 

Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) weigh big decisions for their paper.

“We can’t have the administration dictate our coverage just because they don’t like what we printed about them in the newspaper,” Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) tells Post owner and publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) in director Steven Spielberg’s fine new film The Post. A paean to journalism that is still exceedingly relevant today, Spielberg’s story of the Post’s battle to publish the confidential Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s succeeds on a number of levels, making it one of the best pictures of the year, and giving it a rightful place in the canon of great journalism movies.

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Film Review: Downsizing

Having your tiny cake and eating it, too

Matt Damon (l.) plays Paul Safranek and Jason Sudeikis plays Dave Johnson in Downsizing from Paramount Pictures.

“Going small” is not a goal often associated with the dreams of mainstream America, but what if going small meant maintaining a lavish, upper middle-class, suburban lifestyle with all the trimmings? This deceptively simple idea underlies Downsizing, Alexander Payne’s newest film, starring Matt Damon, Hong Chau, and Christoph Waltz. The film presents enough imagination and asks enough questions to launch a series, but it never figures out what it’s trying to say.

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Film Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Ninth installment sticks to the script

A rebel X-Wing doesn't know when to call it a day
A rebel X-Wing doesn’t know when to call it a day.

“Every once in awhile I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie,” wrote a rapturous Roger Ebert in the summer of 1977 of Star Wars. Later that year a more skeptical Pauline Kael, writing about the same film, said, “the loudness, the smash-and-grab editing, the relentless pacing drive every idea from your head.” Never could the duality of responses to the Star Wars series of films be better predicted. They are either the greatest experiences in a movie theater since L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, or the biggest waste of time since Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Continue reading “Film Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi“

Film Review: Wonder Wheel

Allen’s newest far from Wonder-ful   

Lifeguard and wanna-be writer Mickey (Justin Timberlake) has an affair with the unhappily married Ginny (Kate Winslet).

Let’s first address the elephant in the room. Yes, Wonder Wheel, writer/director Woody Allen’s newest, is about a man who finds himself falling in love with his girlfriend’s step-daughter. I suspect there are many filmgoers who have made up their minds about Allen, and so either won’t see this particular film because of its uncomfortable parallels to his real life, or because, in agreement with his daughter Dylan Farrow’s recent essay, they don’t want to support the work of an accused sexual predator. If you fall in one of those categories, you need read no further, but for those of you who still remain curious and open to Allen’s art, there is another, more pedestrian reason to avoid this picture: it’s just not very good.
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Film Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Superb cast anchors McDonagh’s outstanding southern tale  

Grieving mother Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) expresses her frustration with her daughter’s stalled murder investigation via three billboards. 

“Raped while dying / And still no arrests / How come, Chief Willoughby?” So read the titular three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, in writer/director Martin McDonagh’s brilliant, searing new blackest of black comedies. Whether the picture is correctly classified as a comedy – as its trailer would have it – may be a point of argument, however. While the film is not without its head-shaking, laugh-out-loud moments, they serve as counterpoint to the overarching dark, almost biblical tale that envelopes them, which will leave the viewer contemplative and affected for days after the credits roll.
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Film Review: Last Flag Flying

Time heals all wounds, mostly

Sal (Bryan Cranston), Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), and Doc (Steve Carell) on one last mission
Sal (Bryan Cranston), Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), and Doc (Steve Carell) on one last mission.

Here’s an interesting number, 18, which is the number of feature films directed by Richard Linklater. He’s made a film about rootless Austin hipsters, a film about 70’s high school escapades, a film about 80’s college escapades, a film about opening a school of rock, a film about a ragtag little league baseball team, a film about growing up, even a film about two erstwhile friends, their shared lover, and two hours of very tense conversation.  It’s an impressive number, 18, and would seemingly cover just about every conceivable theme. But whatever the plot, whichever the characters, wherever the setting, Linklater always makes films about time. And his 19th film, Last Flag Flying, is once again a film about time.

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Film Review: A Bad Moms Christmas

Mediocre sequel deserves a lump of coal         

The Bad Moms (from l., Kathryn Hahn, Mila Kunis, and Kristen Bell) get into the Christmas spirit in one of the film’s 8,000 (oh, I mean five) montage sequences.

With A Bad Moms Christmas, writer/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore try in vain to recapture the success of Bad Moms, their smart, funny, and truthful comedy from last year about overextended and overwhelmed modern day moms. They should have left well enough alone; not every picture needs a sequel or to be the start of a franchise. A Bad Moms Christmas is not nearly as funny as the original, and just feels like a painfully obvious and rather weak extension of the filmmakers’ initial idea. Continue reading “Film Review: A Bad Moms Christmas“

Film Review: Suburbicon

Clooney emulates the Coens in adequate film noir      

Maggie (Julianne Moore) and her brother-in-law Gardner (Matt Damon) have an unwanted conversation with a visitor.

George Clooney is clearly a huge fan of the Coen Brothers. After starring in four of their films (Hail, Caesar!; Burn After Reading; O Brother, Where Art Thou; Intolerable Cruelty), he tries his hand at directing one of their screenplays with Suburbicon, marking his first return to the director’s chair since 2014’s The Monuments Men. The result is more successful than that mostly forgettable attempt, but his fan-boy energy permeates his new film almost to distraction. Tonally and stylistically, the picture is an unabashed imitation of a Coen Brothers production, which, if you’re a Coen Brothers fan, is super, but does mean that Clooney offers no cinematic originality here.
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Film Review: The Snowman

This Snowman will leave you cold       

Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) searches for a killer, and we search for a good movie. Which of us will be successful?

Whenever a movie is based on a book, there are always those who will passionately argue that “the book was better.” Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong, but, in the case of The Snowman, which opens today, I firmly believe the-book-is-better-crowd is correct, and I haven’t even read the book upon which the film is based. But, I have seen the movie, and, after watching it, I cannot possibly fathom that anything could be worse than this nonsensical, hastily thrown together, boring mess.
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Film Review: Dina

Love, across the spectrum

Dina and Scott do the wedding cake thing.

There are a few times in our lives when we as individuals, full of our specific collections of flaws and the fantastic, must navigate our way through life-changing and unforgettable events: school dance, funeral for a family member, wedding. Most of us struggle during these times to balance our individual responses and expressions with the expectations of family and community. The clear-eyed yet wholehearted Dina, opening today, asks us to examine a wedding through the eyes of a groom with autism, and a bride with a “smorgasbord” of neurological issues and an extremely violent romantic past. The film unflinchingly examines the power of our need to believe that love conquers all.

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