Evelyn (Emily Blunt) implores her injured son Marcus (Noah Jupe) to be quiet in the face of imminent danger.
Last March, I was all set to go to the advance reviewer screening of A Quiet Place II when the Bay Area began to shelter-in-place. The screening was cancelled and the movie’s release postponed. But this week I finally made it to that reviewer screening, marking my return to the cinema, some 14 months later. And it was worth the wait. Because not only is Part II terrific, but releasing it earlier via streaming wouldn’t have done it justice. This picture is meant for the big screen.
Damon, Bale come out winners in Mangold’s ’60s racing tale
Race car driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale, l.) and car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) discuss the possibility of building a car for Ford that could beat Ferrari at the famed Le Mans race.
Let me start this review by telling you that I know squat about car racing. Indy, NASCAR, road racing — they’re all the same to me. But what I do know is quality film, and Ford v Ferrari definitely comes out a winner in that regard. Director James Mangold’s dramatization of the battle between auto titans Ford and Ferrari for dominance at the 1966 Le Mans race is one of the most adrenaline-filled, rousing good times you’ll have at the theater this year.
After almost two weeks of screenings that ran daily from 8:30 am to midnight, the Sundance Film Festival wrapped up last weekend with its awards presentation. All the winners can be found here, but below I present my personal highlights from my week exploring the Fest’s good, bad, and downright weird. Some of these may be widely released during the year, so I offer my advice on the films you should SEE or SKIP.
1.) Most Over the Top Rip Off of The Office that Feels Like it Was Written At 3:00 am After Smoking Way Too Many Joints: Corporate Animals (Category: Midnight)
Corporate Animals.
Not only does director Patrick Brice (who also directed the much better Sundance offering The Overnight) use a corporate retreat setting for his horror satire, replete with a who’s who of standard office types (Demi Moore as the hard driving boss; Jessica Williams as the dispirited protégée; and Callum Worthy as the eager to please intern, to name a few), but he even casts Office alum Ed Helms as a guide who leads the team on a caving expedition that goes awry, to put it mildly. Trapped deep in a collapsed New Mexico cave (the scenery at least holds its own), the cast is forced to deliver too many stereotypical jokes, especially at the expense of Moore, whose cutthroat boss is little more than a caricature. The group’s descent into cannibalism is played for laughs, but the film isn’t half as edgy as it thinks it is, and the entire exercise feels like writer Sam Bain somehow managed to get his snickering Office fan-fiction greenlit. — SKIP Continue reading “Film Feature: Highs and Lows from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival”
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. Continue reading “Film Review: Suburbicon“
