The Kid Who Would Be King (Joe Cornish, 2019). After his feature directorial debut, Attack the Block, Joe Cornish seemed positioned to jostle with a few others — including Edgar Wright, one of that film’s producers — for the distinction … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up —The Kid Who Would Be King; Total Recall; The Old Man and the Gun
Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942). Not long after presiding over Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in the same calendar year, director Victor Fleming went far more small-scale with this loose adaptation of a typically scruffy John … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Tortilla Flat; Serenity; The Meg
Tomb Raider (Roar Uthaug, 2018). I saw both films that cast Angelina Jolie as adventurer Lara Croft at the time of their original releases, and I don’t remember a second of either one. I suspect the same fate awaits Tomb … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Tomb Raider; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Red Sparrow
Skyscraper (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2018). A combat veteran and former hostage rescue team operative, Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) is working as a security expert when he’s recruited to identify the shortcomings in a state of the art building in Hong … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Skyscraper; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, and Lilly Wachowski, 2012). Based on the dense, woven basket David Mitchell novel of the same name, Cloud Atlas is an escalating dare as cinema. The film freely intercuts between six different plots, spanning … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up —Cloud Atlas; Margaret; Venom
The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey, 2017). The unexpected — and slow-building — success of this big screen musical at least provides gratifying evidence that modern audiences remain hungry for original material, no matter how desperately studio executives treat their production … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — The Greatest Showman; At Eternity’s Gate; Brute Force
I was a fan of Adam McKay’s The Big Short. By any reasonable assessment, the film about the mortgage crisis the leveled the economy in the first decade of this century (based on a nonfiction rage-generator written by Michael Lewis) … Continue reading The Unwatchables — Vice
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher, 2018). This biography of Freddie Mercury, concentrating on his time as the frontman of Queen, is almost startling in its ineptitude. Put aside that it treats the basic chronology of the band’s history … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Bohemian Rhapsody; Birds of Passage; Ralph Breaks the Internet
L7: Pretend We’re Dead (Sarah Price, 2016). A nifty video scrapbook posing as documentary, this film traces the career of the L.A. hard rock band L7. Largely avoiding details of personal entanglements, L7: Pretend We’re Dead dutifully ticks off the … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — L7: Pretend We’re Dead; Cold War; Green Book
Tully (Jason Reitman, 2018). Working with a script by Diablo Cody, the writer behind two of his best outings, and a compelling, vanity-free performance by Charlize Theron, director Jason Reitman creates a film that is almost jarring in its bleak … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Tully; Can You Ever Forgive Me; The Smart Studios Story
Coffee for Two 