PEPPERMINT. Due to the recent and ongoing action movie renaissance, there is in every new shoot ’em up the hopeful possibility of transcendence, or at least a couple of entertaining hours. But for every Atomic Blonde (2017) there must of course be a Peppermint and the pattern of hope despoiled continues. I cite Atomic Blonde […]
Broadway Cinema
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Flesh and Fury
A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN. I left A Prayer Before Dawn feeling like I’d been beaten to a pulp in a Thai prison, but I mean that as a compliment. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s 2017 drama, written by Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese, and starring Joe Cole, is based on a memoir by Billy Moore, a Liverpudlian boxer […]
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Puppets in L.A.
THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS. So they’ve got this this LA detective noir filled with violence and drugs and sex, enacted by puppets — Henson puppets, no less! — and Melissa McCarthy? That’s gold, by my lights. Or at least it should be; it’s just that somebody has to do the hard work to take a fun, […]
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Crazy Good
CRAZY RICH ASIANS. Director Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s bestseller is already a big deal in that it’s the first all-Asian cast from a major Hollywood studio since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago. That it’s also raking in cash with a $34 million five-day opening — serious numbers for a rom-com […]
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Monsters Back from the Past
Reviews BLACKKKLANSMAN. I’ve never subscribed to the notion that hatred is borne of fear. There’s truth to it, I suppose, but it has always seemed to me an attempted defense of something indefensible. Fear is natural and necessary, hatred is useful only in fomenting hatred. To offer fear as the source of hatred seems to […]
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Long Lost
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS. There are stories, obscured by the complacency and subterfuge of modern life, that retain the power to surprise and amaze. Some, through exploration, become chilling reminders of what we do not and cannot know about the world and, more importantly, the people around us. Three Identical Strangers has become one of the […]
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Nothing’s Impossible
Reviews MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT. Whether or not we need more missions impossible remains the subject of debate. Despite the retention of stars Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames, and the audacity to weather two decades and produce six (!) installments, the franchise exists primarily to outdo the other tent-poles with stunt sequences and gadgetry. And, […]
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Tripping
Reviews SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. I woke up thinking about this movie, which proves hard to forget. It leaves tracers behind the eyes, like staring at a too-bright neon light in a too-dark, too-late barroom, vestiges of its vibrant, driving, pointed, flawed, ugly, beautiful, street-style visual poetry. It’s appropriate for the directorial debut of Boots Riley, […]
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Skyscraper Bites
Reviews Skyscraper A show of hands then, for anyone in attendance who hasn’t seen Die Hard (1988). I’d be inclined to ask you all to leave, as it would seem we have very little to talk about. Seeing as you are the ostensible intended audience for writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s “homage,” though, I guess you ought […]
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Comic Book Movies Can Be Fun
Reviews Ant-Man and the Wasp. Based on my many overlong, one-note lamentations about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its unchecked consumption of cinema, one might reasonably expect that: 1) I wouldn’t particularly look forward to the prospect of another installment, regardless of the hero, but also 2) the return of Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man/Scott Lang might […]
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Mr. Nice Guy
Reviews SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO. It might make sense to preface this, if only to lend some additional context. Sicario (2015) is for me a deeply soothing, satisfying experience, a cinematic comfort that lives on a short list of movies I can put on anytime — usually late at night, usually after a few […]
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From Another Time
Reviews JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM. Color me … skeptical but I had reservations. I know, I know, I’m not leading with my customary font of optimism but rest easy, there’s something coming about a drunk minister wrestling with suicide a little later. I’ve enjoyed more than my share of Jurassic entertainment. In younger, simpler days […]