(September 14, 2017)
Reviews IT. Stephen King has a hard time relinquishing creative control of his body of work. He famously hated Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, saying it left out the...
(September 7, 2017)
Reviews INGRID GOES WEST. As a person mistrustful of social media and the vast, false fabric it represents, one might guess I would enjoy a prickly, misanthropic movie about lives...
(August 31, 2017)
Reviews WIND RIVER. Taylor Sheridan would be most recognizable to many for his arc as Deputy Chief David Hale on the first couple of seasons of the TV series Sons...
(August 24, 2017)
Reviews THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD. For those who would have assumed — not unreasonably — that the buddy action comedy had become a relic, a memory of two and half decades...
(August 17, 2017)
Reviews ANNABELLE: CREATION. Promotional materials reference this as "The next chapter in The Conjuring universe," which comes across as aspirational and grandiose. That known universe now includes: The Conjuring...
Tower wobbles, Detroit burns and Kidnap is on the run
(August 10, 2017)
Reviews THE DARK TOWER. It's never surprising when a Stephen King novel series is adapted for film, but an eight-book series? In 95 minutes? The Dark Tower turns out to...
(August 3, 2017)
Reviews ATOMIC BLONDE. So we return to the conundrum of The Good Trailer. On one hand, good trailers can surprise us like beautiful gifts. Because so many movies register as...
(July 27, 2017)
Reviews DUNKIRK. Christopher Nolan is something of a professional dinosaur. He broke out with Memento (2000), a challenging, compelling and unlikely low-budget surprise, just as the era of the Big...
(July 20, 2017)
The Hero It seems I've written fairly frequently of late — probably too frequently — about the bright possibility of hope dispelling the corrosive recent mists of cinematic mediocrity and...
(July 13, 2017)
Spider-Man: Homecoming A chorus, sweetened by the voices of multitudes, echoes brightly through the halls of mediadom; even the nerds have lent their breath. And they are not wrong: new...
(July 6, 2017)
Reviews BABY DRIVER. Writer/director Edgar Wright — like Tarantino before him and Scorsese before him — has managed to make a successful career of being a tremendous movie nerd. Unashamed...
(June 29, 2017)
Reviews What makes a movie "American"? Is it patriotic or critical? Is it about identity, individualism, team spirit or oppression? Is it set in the Wild West or a modern...
(June 22, 2017)
Reviews 47 METERS DOWN. I may have let out an audible groan when the title screen appeared: Johannes Roberts' 47 Meters Down. If you've heard of Johannes Roberts, then you...
(June 15, 2017)
Reviews IT COMES AT NIGHT. As the recent tidal wave of smaller, independent horror movies seems to have receded a bit, we have the opportunity to consider their merits and...
(June 8, 2017)
Reviews WONDER WOMAN. As much as we shouldn't have to be talking about gender or gender inequality anymore, recent events support the notion that we do. Plodding progress continues to...
(June 1, 2017)
Reviews BAYWATCH. Who, really, is to blame when something terrible like this happens? And I say "to blame" rather than "responsible" because there are a great number of responsible parties,...
