Films – Page 40 – Spinning Platters

Film Review: The Accountant

Convoluted, violent story doesn’t add up to a picture worth seeing

Accountants Dana (Anna Kendrick) and Chris (Ben Affleck) are puzzled by some discrepancies they discover on the books at a robotics firm.

Ben Affleck has always had a sort of a cold, distant quality; showcasing warmth and deep emotion isn’t his strong suit. Such chilliness is what made him both a decent Batman and so good in a role like the one he had in Gone Girl, in which he played such a standoffish husband that he easily seemed capable of murdering his wife. So it’s not surprising that director Gavin O’Connor (best known for the 2011 cult hit Warrior) would cast Affleck in his new film The Accountant, an action thriller in which Affleck plays Christian “Chris” Wolff, an imperturbable accountant and assassin with a high-functioning form of autism who connects better with numbers than with people. The problem, though, is that O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque (The Judge) play much of Chris’s condition for laughs, and the Rain Man-as-Jason Bourne premise doesn’t succeed nearly as well as the filmmakers probably hoped it would.
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MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight

The 39^th Mill Valley Film Festival, showcasing over 200 films from more than 50 countries, opened last Thursday evening, and runs until this Sunday, October 16th. The Festival is screening some titles already garnering Oscar buzz: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, which opened the Festival (and will open widely this fall), the stunning Manchester by the Sea (which already received deserved acclaim back in January at its Sundance premiere), and Loving, the Jeff Nichols historical drama that closes the Fest.

With a full week to go, there is still plenty of time to head over to Marin to catch some great new films. Below we spotlight five Fest titles you may want to check out. Full schedule, tickets, and more information are available here. Continue reading “MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight“

Film Review: Queen of Katwe

Nair brings inspirational chess prodigy story to life in appealing new film

Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) imparts chess – and life – wisdom to young Phiona (Madina Nalwanga).

The phrase “heartwarming family film” has been overused so much that it’s become a meaningless cliché, but when is the last time you saw a live action picture that legitimately fit that description? A few Pixar movies aside, the cinematic offerings that truly appeal to parents and kids alike have been pretty paltry lately. Disney competently rectifies that situation today with Queen of Katwe, a well made, well acted, inspirational-without-being-cloying film that tells the true story of a poor girl from the poverty-stricken town of Katwe, Uganda, who becomes a national and international chess champion.
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Film Review: Kicks

A promising start that never elevates to excellence during its running time.

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Kicks starts off with Brandon, our lead character, introducing us to his wishes of being in space, where he no longer gets chased around the neighborhood and can live in perfect quiet. His dreams are accompanied by visions of a man (or woman) in a space suit, and this astronaut makes many appearances throughout the movie during critical moments. It’s weird and otherworldly, and does momentarily elevate this movie into the stratosphere, but the reality keeps dragging us down.

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Film Review: Sully

Heroic pilot’s story takes flight in Eastwood’s well executed film

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks, r.) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart, l.) prepare to land US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

No discussion of Sully, director Clint Eastwood’s new film about East Bay hero Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the commercial airline pilot who, in January, 2009, successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the frigid Hudson River after its engines failed, can begin without first acknowledging that casting Tom Hanks as Sully is a perfect marriage of actor and role. Tom Hanks, the Jimmy Stewart of our day, embodies competence, integrity, and innate decency in a way that makes him a natural fit to play the heroic pilot of the so-called Miracle on the Hudson, in which all 155 people on board survived the emergency water landing. Imagining another actor in the role is almost impossible, and Hanks’s dependable Everyman persona is a large reason Eastwood’s dramatization of the real life event works so well.
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Film Review: War Dogs

**Arms and the bros: Hangover director brings incredible true story to the screen**

Efraim (Jonah Hill, center) and David (Miles Teller, r.) inspect some choice merchandise in an Albanian warehouse.

The economy of war and the audacity of youth brilliantly collide in writer/director Todd Phillips’s new picture War Dogs. A heavily fictionalized dramatization of Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone article (and later book), the film details the spectacular rise and fall of two 20-something young men from Miami Beach who became major international arms dealers during the heart of the Iraq War.
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Film Review: Kubo and the Two Strings

‘Kubo’ is a visual masterpiece!

Beetle, Kubo, and Monkey looking high... — Beetle, Kubo, and Monkey looking high…

I’ve never seen stop-motion animation as inventively crafted or as embedded in the storytelling as I saw in Kubo and the Two Strings. Laika, the animation studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls, releases their most ambitious film yet with Kubo. Part parable and part fantasy epic, Kubo has a bit of everything, and though it gets a little over-indulgent in the final ten minutes, the film never feels overcrowded. Credit is due to first time director Travis Knight (son of Phil Knight, of Nike), who does a solid job of executing on an intelligent script by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler. The filmmakers infuse Kubo with unique action sequences, family-friendly humor, some nightmarish chills, and strong emotional themes. When these aspects are woven together with solid voice acting and stunning visuals, Kubo becomes a memorable cinematic tapestry.

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Film Review: Hell or High Water

Bridges, Pine anchor riveting western crime drama

Brothers Tanner (Ben Foster, l.) and Toby (Chris Pine) come up with a plan to save their family’s West Texas farm.

Actor turned screenwriter Taylor Sheridan proved he had a knack for conveying the rhythms and feeling of the American southwest with his award-nominated debut feature screenplay for last year’s gritty drug smuggling crime drama Sicario. The success of that debut was no fluke, as we see here in Hell or High Water, Sheridan’s new, follow up screenplay. A similarly southwest-set blend of western and crime drama, the picture rivals the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men as a modern day, quintessentially American morality tale.
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Film Review: Sausage Party

A profound examination of religious faith — buried deep, deep within a hilariously crude, offensive, foul-mouthed animated film.

Oh, sh*t, these foods are f**cking foul-mouthed!

Imagine if Toy Story was written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and then sprinkled with a dash of Caligula. Even that probably doesn’t quite capture just how far Sausage Party goes in terms of it’s R-related language and content (supposedly it came close to an NC-17 rating, until they toned it down — yes, toned it down!). As advertised, the cast and creators of This is the End are back, this time to infuse their stoner, ultra-sexualized, black comedy into an animated feature. Sausage Party goes a step beyond just shock-value to deliver its laughs, serving a healthy does of side-splitting puns, curse-words, pop culture references, and hilarious characters. But Sausage Party is also an incredibly clever film. It disguises it’s more contemplative themes of divinity, the existence of an afterlife, and the triviality of religious tensions within the entertaining muck of a hilariously perverse one-note culinary joke — that anthropomorphic foods discover that they’re all doomed to be devoured by humans.

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Film Review: Pete’s Dragon

Recapturing that ol’ warm fuzzy Disney feeling.

For those who remember the 1977 Disney classic, Pete’s Dragon, you may wonder why an obscure title such as that one would need a remake. To be honest, the remake doesn’t answer that question. But nevertheless, the new Pete’s Dragon is a very charming family film. Pete’s Dragon has an old school magical feel to it, with similar familial themes to classic 1970s Disney films such as The Apple Dumpling Gang, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Escape to Witch Mountain, and the original of the same name. Aside from the less-than-ideal usage of country-tinged pop songs to convey the right emotions we should be feeling, and the absence of musical numbers, Pete’s Dragon is a solidly executed and delightful adventure.

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