The notion of people eavesdropping on others via television was first planted in my nascent noodle by George Burns, who would inexplicably tune his bedroom set to the living room so he could spy on Gracie Allen’s antics. In Edson Oda’s low tech depiction of limbo, Will (Winston Duke) sits …
Nine shorts from around the world come together to form an expertly curated celebration of movement and texture that’s not your average collection of sick, twisted, and stillborn cartoons. The subject matter (wooden matches die for a cigarette, two Norwegian construction workers debate normalcy, a painterly backdrop sets the tone …
The final installment in director Pablo Larrain’s unplanned “Pinochet era” trilogy that began with Tony Manero in 2008 and includes 2010's Post Mortem. The fate of the Chilean people rests in the hands of Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), a soda pop–selling ad exec hired to quarterback the “No” campaign. …
Everything moves so fast at the outset. In a little over a minute, two weeks of Hutch’s (Bob Odenkirk) life are condensed with thudding rapidity. The problem with Nobody is that our eponymous nebbish was once a notorious somebody, a retired mob “auditor,” a high-paid contract killer who traded in …
A vile, vulgar nightmare of a movie that amounts to little more than a dirty garbage bag filled with closeups. Tom Ford’s (A Single Man) latest begins on shock with a quartet of naked Mrs. Grapes go-go dancing and quickly plummets. Ford intercuts two stories — the life of cauterized …
Fresh in from Texas, Superdad Owen Wilson and the family arrive “somewhere in Asia” just in time to celebrate Kill All Americans Day. Fine sleight of hand work on the pre-credit sequence promptly sails headlong into a Xenophobic, effects-laden thrill ride, minus the superhero costumes. Pierce Brosnan, in a brief …
Hollywood’s way of paying reparations for its slavish devotion to white serial killers. The narrative kicks off with the soon-to-be liberated psycho killer Idris Elba’s backstory, dispatched by way of a newscast played under the opening-credit ride to a probation hearing. It gets staler. For a third of the picture, …
How do you know it’s a Liam Neeson action film? Simple: there’s a picture of his daughter taped beneath the sun visor of his car. Neeson stars as booze-soaked flying cop who begins receiving midair death texts from a fellow passenger. While no fictional relative of Neeson was hurt during …
The time was right for Jordan Peele to become the next M. Night Shyamalan, but first a word about a moment in the trailer piqued my interest. The only black horse trainers in Hollywood, Otis “OJ” Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and his estranged sister Emerald (Keke Palmer), are the descendants of …
North Hollywood arrives with the tagline: The first ever movie about becoming a pro skater. Mikey Alfred’s distinctively captivating coming-of-age drama (with strong comedic leanings) is clearly set in the present day, something the first time director's seamless flair for blurring decades steadfastly refuses to acknowledge. The fashions scream, “Where …
Why strap an anamorphic lens to a camera if you’re not going to use it? For his first film shot in widescreen, visionary director Robert Eggers’s (The Witch, The Lighthouse) repeatedly imagines his Viking Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) glowering back at the audience from center frame and with enough sideroom …
A white guy in Detroit, 1954, is looking for a reliable black guy, preferably one fresh out of stir, to surrender three hours’ work in exchange for $5000. What’s the catch? It begins along the lines of The Desperate Hours, with two of the armed home invaders (Don Cheadle and …
Until today, I never thought it possible to miss Nicholas Sparks. While dad is off fighting the Nazis, mom (Gyöngyvér Bognár) deposits their twin boys (the empty-faced László and András Gyémánt) with her estranged mother (Piroska Molnár), an abusive beast stationed in a granny flat directly behind a concentration camp …
The series peaked with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but the bean-counters at EON Productions considered it Ian Fleming’s red-headed stepchild. The producers faulted George Lazenby, the first post-Connery 007, for the film’s initial lack of grosses and canned him after one outing. The commonality between that film and this …