Reviews THE INCREDIBLES 2. Sequels, remakes, reboots and “remaginings” of movies happen faster than any good soul can keep up. That’s what makes the arrival of The Incredibles 2 so remarkable: Does it seem like a long time since the original — a wonderfully entertaining film — arrived on the scene, or is it you? […]
Broadway Cinema
Posted inArts + Scene
A Girl’s Best Friend
Reviews OCEAN’S 8. Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 (2001), itself a remake of a Rat Pack vehicle, and a franchise that’s been uneven at best, isn’t old enough for an all-lady spin-off to provoke rending of clothing over ruined childhoods, which is a nice change. Director Gary Ross may not have Soderbergh’s pacing or the edits […]
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The Young and the Feckless
Reviews In back-to-back news cycles swirling with tenuous international political relationships, a reported death toll of nearly 5,000 Americans in the wake of Hurricane Maria and an investigation into whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, it might surprise the casual observer that the jokes and comments of a handful of female comedians have garnered […]
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When Han Met Chewie
Reviews SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY. Every addition to the Star Wars canon has shouldered massive expectations in terms of earnings and the continuation of a mythic narrative that more than one generation feels ownership of. A single stroke of casting, a line of dialogue, might ruin fanboy childhoods, serve up resistance metaphors for our […]
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Franchise in Anti-hero’s Clothing
Reviews Deadpool 2. We live in a weird, expanding world of sequels. Defined by diminishing returns, they have also become a certainty: Anything that generates revenue on a certain scale will be quickly followed by as many follow-ups as the market will bear. This newly risen reality can be exciting (more of a good thing, […]
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Free Gabrielle Union and Melissa McCarthy
Reviews BREAKING IN. For longer than I’d really care to countenance (probably the release of Bring It On in 2000) I’ve found Gabrielle Union to be a consummately compelling actor who should be in major releases with her name above the title. There are vestigial traces of the old weak knees, mild palpitations playground crush […]
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Bad Samaritan is … Bad
Reviews BAD SAMARITAN. There can be fun in a bad movie. The histrionics of ill-prepared actors, the guilty satisfaction of DIY-grade effects, the cheap thrill of catching a boom microphone dipping into frame. It can shrink the distance between the makers and the audience. Earnest effort can be endearing, charming for its lack of charm […]
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Ad Infinitum
Reviews AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. Why a superhero movie, of all things, should need to start from a screenplay of Dickensian bulk — teeming with characters and settings but lacking the wit, vitality, sense of time and place, and joy of language that made that author’s work significant and occasionally enjoyable — continues to elude me. […]
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The return of Troopers and the trials of Schumer
John J. Bennett Reviews SUPER TROOPERS 2. Back when Super Troopers (2001) came out on DVD, I’m sure I walked past the box dozens of times while wandering the aisles of the video store (it’s a kind of reliquary for arcane media, where one can borrow said media, for a nominal fee). But I had […]
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To the Dogs
Reviews RAMPAGE. Dear Mr. Johnson (née The Rock): Your fans are small but we are many. You are one but you are great, and you carry on your crafted shoulders our hopes and dreams. We love you and we are worried about you. Many of the movies you are making are borderline nonsense. We understand […]
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Silence is Golden
Reviews A QUIET PLACE. I’ve probably written more than one ought to about the state of contemporary horror movies and my on-again, off-again love affair with them. For a time, the genre seemed like it might be a bellwether of an upwelling of creativity in American cinema. It looked like a return to the rough […]
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Head in the Game
REVIEWS READY PLAYER ONE. I found myself mounting a preemptive defense for this movie some weeks ago. A friend (and frequent contributor to these pages, actually, but colleague sounds pretentious) told me he had tried and failed, angrily, to read the Ernest Cline novel upon which it is based. He picked it up, he informed […]