Easily the most thrilling aspect of the new film Atomic Blonde is watching the fiery freedom of Charlize Theron. Long an actress of uncommon fearlessness, Theron thrives as Lorraine Broughton, an agent dispatched by Britain’s MI6 to Berlin as the … Continue reading Now Playing: Atomic Blonde
Dunkirk is exactly the film Christopher Nolan needed to make at this point in his career. I’m not referring to whatever artistic compulsion the writer-director may have felt in his pulsing, creative soul. Instead, I mean this is the sort … Continue reading Now Playing — Dunkirk
There may be no clearer demonstration of the artistic failure of Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets than my exhausted disdain for nearly every bit of it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that … Continue reading Now Playing — Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
When I write out Judd Apatow’s name in this space, it’s usually in conjunction with some grousing about his creative shortcomings, which have spread across the field of cinematic comedy like spilled Fresca. Apatow is a rambunctiously creative filmmaker, but … Continue reading Now Playing: The Big Sick
As with its immediate predecessors, I admire the franchise film War for the Planet of the Apes for attempting to instill weightier themes into its high-concept hook. Also in accordance with the other offerings since the reboot was rebooted — … Continue reading Now Playing: War for the Planet of the Apes
We are now in the tenth year of the Marvel Age of Movies, and who can argue against the astonishing influence of the comic book publisher turned crafter of cinematic crescendos? All through that resounding success, it had to rankle … Continue reading Now Playing — Spider-Man: Homecoming
The Beguiled, the new film from director Sofia Coppola, is based on a novel written by Thomas Cullinan, originally published in 1966. Realistically, though, it probably owes more to the first attempt at taking the story from page to screen: … Continue reading Now (and Then) Playing: The Beguiled
When I stop to really think about the state of modern movies, one shortcoming is perplexing above all others. How is it that there are so few creations that evidence an abundant, overwhelming, crushing love of moviemaking itself? We’re now … Continue reading Now Playing: Baby Driver
The title character of the new film Okja is a “super-pig.” In the bizarre, futuristic (though set in modern-day) vision of writer-director Bong Joon-Ho, an American corporation launches a publicity stunt competition to have odd, porcine animals — supposedly discovered in Chile, though that assertion is suspect from the jump — raised by individuals scattered all across the globe. After a decade, the creatures are to be evaluated in a glorified pageant before beings added to the assembly line of food production. Bong renders his story at a mad careen that resembles an inability to entirely setting on a general … Continue reading Now Playing: Okja
I feel compelled to write about the audience I was in midst of when I saw the film It Comes at Night. The second feature from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, It Comes at Night is being positioned as a horror film for promotional purposes. That’s entirely fair. All the elements are in place, including a constantly mounting sense of dread, allusions to a devastating and unexplained phenomenon that has ravaged the populace, and a wary appraisal of the intrinsic darkness of desperate people. And yet the film is primarily notable for its colossal restraint more than its vivid shocks. In … Continue reading Now Playing: It Comes at Night
Coffee for Two 