Netflix
A House of Dynamite (2025)
Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, Venice International Film Festival competition entry “A House of Dynamite,” is, for the most part, one of those end-of-days Armageddon movies, except it never actually culminates in special effects-laden spectacles of total obliteration. The film does not follow the Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich blockbuster tradition. Instead, it focuses solely on those behind the scenes trying to respond and stave off the impending destruction.
Continue reading “Nuclear Options” »
Nicole Rivelli/IFC Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Certain Women (2016)
Kelly Reichardt is starting to get deserved attention for her style of filmmaking, which is the quiet telling of ordinary working-class stories in western America from a woman’s point of view. Michelle Williams was the first big-name actress to realize what Ms. Reichardt was doing; they made “Wendy and Lucy” together in 2008, and then “Meek’s Cutoff” in 2011 – a historically accurate film about a lost group of settlers in 1840s Oregon. There is no one else making movies like hers in America now, and for that reason a lot more people are paying attention. With that attention, she has chosen to adapt three loosely-linked short stories by Maile Meloy about women in and around Livingston, Mont.
Continue reading “What Women Want” »
Universal Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
The Boxtrolls (2014)
“The Boxtrolls” is a movie aimed at children. It is also disgusting and immoral. It breaches a line that should not have been crossed — and it’s been rated PG in both Britain and the United States. What the hell are the rating boards thinking? Plain and simple, “The Boxtrolls” is propaganda for the war machine. The normalization of torture in cinema — and most especially cinema for children — has got to stop. Someone has to say it.
Continue reading “Jacked in the Box” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Daniel Smith/Warner Brothers Pictures
The easiest way to digest “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” is to pretend that the film does not concern the exploits of fiction’s finest detective at all. If one can convince oneself that Robert Downey Jr. is playing not Sherlock, but some rough-and-tumble Victorian adventurer — Indiana Holmes perhaps — then the film can be enjoyed, much like its predecessor, as a rambunctious but somewhat shallow romp. Naturally, one might notice the odd similarity between Conan Doyle’s creation and the hero of Guy Ritchie’s film; but that is surely mere coincidence.
Continue reading “An Icon Out of the Elementary” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Ward (2011)
Arc Entertainment
A full decade since “Ghosts of Mars,” John Carpenter’s long-awaited return to directing has attracted no fanfare at all. In fact, “The Ward” will be unceremoniously showing on a single screen in New York, as well as Los Angeles, in addition to video-on-demand. It’s a shame, because it’s scary good. Not that it’s anywhere near Mr. Carpenter’s classics such as “Halloween” or “Escape From New York.” And it’s not going to renew his relevancy the way “Scream” did for Wes Craven. But that doesn’t mean you won’t shiver throughout your subway ride home.
Continue reading “One Freaks Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Merrick Morton/Paramount Pictures
Like Danny Boyle, David Fincher is a filmmaker whose stylish sensibility almost always leaves moviegoers cold. But also like Mr. Boyle, Mr. Fincher has this year stumbled upon a movie with a heart and excelled. Based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” would most likely have been a horrific, vomit-inducing train wreck in the hands of a Steven Spielberg or a Ron Howard. The aging-backward premise notwithstanding, the film is basically “Forrest Gump” meets “Legends of the Fall” meets “Meet Joe Black,” complete with Gumpian historical anecdotes (Teddy Roosevelt instead of JFK this time!) courtesy of “Gump” screenwriter Eric Roth. Thank goodness Mr. Fincher has the clinical precision of a music video director, and here counterbalances the otherwise go-for-broke sappiness of all the separations and deaths in the “Benjamin Button” screenplay.
Continue reading “A Box of Chocolates Is Like Life” »