It’s been a little more than forty years since simple letters in a crystal blue font first informed audiences they were about to see a story that happened in a distant galaxy quite some time earlier. Conceived and directed by … Continue reading Now Playing — Star Wars: The Last Jedi
There is a lot to Guillermo del Toro’s filmmaking that I admire. But the prime feat may be the way he can bend just about any story to his jovially macabre sensibilities. There are times when the manipulation of the narrative … Continue reading Now Playing — The Shape of Water
The Disaster Artist would have been easy to structure as a prolonged dumb joke. It would have been simpler to structure it as a mean joke, delivering judgmental comic blows against the misguided dreamers that move through it’s lifted-from-real-life plot. … Continue reading Now Playing — The Disaster Artist
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the new film by Martin McDonagh, begins on the outskirts of a small, Midwestern town. A woman named Mildred (France McDormand) notices a trio of dilapidated billboards lined up in a satisfying grouping. She has … Continue reading Now Playing — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
I’ve championed the output of Pixar Animation Studios often and vigorously over the years, but lately I’ve been nervous. The rare studio that wriggled its way into auteur status, Pixar currently sits in the the middle of stretch in which … Continue reading Now Playing — Coco
Greta Gerwig has officially been a film director previously, sharing that role with indie film stalwart Joe Swanberg on the 2008 feature Nights and Weekends. Her writing credits are more extensive, ranging from her breakthrough in the low-key breakthrough Hannah … Continue reading Now Playing — Lady Bird
Approaching the ten year mark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s increasingly difficult — for me, anyway — to examine the offerings from the comic book publisher turned moviemaking behemoth outside of the context of their making. Taken on its … Continue reading Now Playing — Thor: Ragnarok
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a film to be laudably ambitious, resolutely intelligent, clompingly obvious, and archly indifferent at the same time. But here we have Blade Runner 2049, a distant sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 science … Continue reading Now Playing — Blade Runner 2049
On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, with great ceremonial adornments, strode to the center of the playing field of the Houston Astrodome, where a tennis court had been put in place. The event was billed as … Continue reading Now Playing: Battle of the Sexes
I remember when Stephen King’s novel It was first published, in 1986. Then only a dozen years into his career as a novelist — but already claiming nearly twenty books to his credit — King was an unstoppable force in … Continue reading Now Playing: It
Coffee for Two 