Like Father, Like Son Review
RATING: (3 STARS) The Cannes-Jury-Prize-winning drama Like Father, Like Son, from the marvelously talented Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, tells a really straightforward tale of a pair of families in crisis. It’s a regular Greek tragedy, in fact, but Kore-eda very interestingly circumvents emotion that’d be unapologetically oozing out of an American version of the same […]
Lucy Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Lucy is a puzzling film insofar as it’s both fantastically inspired and utter garbage, and it’s really hard to tell where the two opposing qualities begin and end. On the one hand, director Luc Besson imbues the film with an energy heretofore untapped in science-fiction films that don’t have the word “Star” […]
Guardians of the Galaxy Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) “What was it about?” It’s often the first question someone asks me when I tell them about a movie I saw, and it ought to be the easiest one to answer. The first cinematic adaptation of Marvel’s deep-space-set saga Guardians of the Galaxy challenges that notion. Here, a studio has neutered down […]
Life Itself Review
RATING: (4 STARS) “A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and make us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.” —Roger Ebert, 1994 There’s a really clever reflexiveness at play with the last two […]
Snowpiercer Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) After months and months of waiting, wondering whether the notorious Weinstein Company would allow director Bong Joon-ho to share his true vision for Snowpiercer with the world, the film is finally here (in theaters and on VOD), and surprisingly, it’s awfully straightforward. That isn’t to say it’s not a little weird, but […]
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of the most unusual big-budget Hollywood action movies I’ve ever seen. For one, it opens with a virtually silent 20-minute sequence—one that catches us up with characters from the film’s predecessor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. There’s also next to no […]
The LEGO Movie Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) The very idea that something called The LEGO Movie was being made was enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone with good cinematic taste or a mind for originality. You know those critics who think they need to write to save cinema? The announcement of a feature-length LEGO movie was […]
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review
RATING: (2 STARS) The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is many things—a good film not being one of them. But in between non-sensical, neon-soaked action sequences and cliche-ridden superhero movie romance are some surprisingly acceptable moments. Electro’s transformation from bullied to bully is hardly inspired. Ditto Peter Parker’s exploration of his parents’ past. But these oddly (if […]
The Double (2014) Review
RATING: (2 STARS) Director Richard Ayoade’s The Double finds visual beauty in some objectively ugly places. The entire movie is bathed in harsh, obnoxious light, and a dusty, dirty film—”a patina of shit,” to quote the movie Michael Clayton—engulfs its characters, which supports the film’s themes that the working world is a suffocating, miserable place. […]
Blood Ties Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Though the film that couldn’t be more representative of a specific place (New York City) and time (the 1970s), Guillaume Canet’s Blood Ties deals with themes that are timeless. An intense sibling rivalry, one between a cop and criminal, takes center stage, but there’s more—arguably too much—going on in this story co-written […]
Nymphomaniac: Volume I Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Volume I of famous Danish provocateur Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac saga is…well…incomplete. This portrait of a woman’s journey into sex addiction builds and builds and builds, and if Volume II delivers on the promise introduced here, these two drifting hours of character development will feel essential. On their own, they just don’t. […]
Kids for Cash Review
RATING: (3 STARS) For the uninitiated, the “Kids for Cash” judicial scandal took place over a period of about ten years, from the late 1990s to the late 2000s. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (one county over from where this reviewer grew up, incidentally), Judge Mark Ciavarella ruled over the juvenile court system with an iron […]
