Reviews THOR: RAGNAROK. I’ve tried to find at least something to like about each addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; this has proven easier in some cases than others. By and large, the movies are entertaining, expensive looking and well acted, but they also tend toward over-length, weak plots and debilitating Chronic Seriousness. That last […]
Minor Theatre
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Sending a Message
Reviews SUBURBICON has become the focus of much recent attention for doing Paramount’s worst wide-release box office business, ever. The surprising element in this is not the movie’s poor performance; rather, it’s the confounding fact that Paramount put it in a position to fail as dramatically as it has. Who could have possibly thought that […]
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Hot Shots
Reviews ONLY THE BRAVE. Director Joseph Kosinski’s last feature Oblivion (2013) left me with mixed feelings: beautifully made from a technical standpoint, vividly imagined, well cast and acted, and yet its story came apart midway through and never recovered. It was an exercise in frustration, in potential greatness lost to a screenplay that needed just […]
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Stuck with Yourself
Reviews HAPPY DEATH DAY. I was reticent at the prospect of another PG-13 horror movie. More often than not, the tamer rating means the movie has been defanged just enough to sell tickets to unaccompanied minors, which almost inevitably means something of substance has been removed, reinforcing that commerce will always trump art. Or it […]
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The Limits of Fidelity
Reviews BLADE RUNNER 2049. Lukewarm reception of an arguably perfect thing, based entirely on one’s own predilections rather than on the qualities of said thing, can carry with it some share of guilt or wrongdoing; a sense of having failed the thing more than it has failed you. Such is my quandary with Blade Runner […]
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Smooth Landing
Reviews AMERICAN MADE. Some of the same criticisms could be levied (not unfairly) against both Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman, particularly at this rather advanced stage in their careers. Tending toward grand gesture, seeking the widest possible audience, creating a spectacle — some might say they’ve left behind the vulnerability and risk that launched […]
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Dressed to Kill
Reviews KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE. Matthew Vaughn first came to prominence, at least in my narrow little world, producing Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). Having gone down the rabbit hole of British crime cinema at the time, and being a sucker for quick, slangy dialogue, clever editing and […]
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Aiming High and Low
Reviews AMERICAN ASSASSIN. Solid, straight-ahead action pictures seem ever rarer in a field dominated by costumed heroes, horror and animation. It may well be that their day has passed, that the genre has been relegated to the digital equivalent of “straight-to-video,” where Nicolas Cage can reign, in ridiculous repose, as the king of the dusty, […]
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No Spoilers: Woodshock’s Red Carpet Evening
On the evening of Saturday, Sept. 9, the line for the red-carpet special screening of Woodshock at the Minor Theatre wrapped around the block. The Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission and Minor Theatre co-hosted the catered event for the locals — scouts, transportation crew, extras and more — who participated in the film’s five weeks of […]
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Losers Rejoice
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 moral overtones of its source material. In 1997, King tried to rectify this by collaborating on a television miniseries that starred goofy-haired Steven Weber (’90s […]
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Dark Turns
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 both at the hot center and the colder fringes of swipe/like/love/#AMAZING. One would guess correctly and Ingrid Goes West is just such a thing. After […]