“Why can’t you simply put your critical faculties on hold long enough to sit back and enjoy the damn movie?” The question comes up — particularly in the summer months — more times than I care to remember. Olympus Has Fallen is the answer to discerning action fan’s prayers: an …
Seventeen-year-old “Andy” enters Eric Daniel Metzgar’s documentary facing four felony charges related to unlawful firearms and a stolen vehicle. Rather than a pixelated mosaic mask to conceal underage Andy’s identity, Metzgar embraces a less traditional approach by animating scenes involving the participation of the minor and his parents. It’s through …
At around the 30-minute mark, Martin Scorsese and his young daughter appear backstage after a concert at Madison Square Garden for an audience with the boy band sensation. Marty speaks of how He and Francesca exchange music and then proceeds to offer the group His personal dispensation. With a forced …
An out-of-work lingerie clerk is hired as a bounty hunter to track down her ex. Katherine Heigl’s idea of a bold departure is changing her hair color. Were it not for men stepping in to save the day, our heroine wouldn’t have survived the first reel, let alone the entire …
The play’s the thing in this scenical adaptation of playwright/screenwriter Kemp Powers’ fictionalized account of a meeting between NFL great Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). We open in the Twilight Zone: it’s February 1964, and upon his …
The reason Lin (Angel Zhao), a brainy but painfully withdrawn transfer student, can’t seem to hold onto friends has little to do with her personality. She suffers from cognitive confusion, a PTSD-related syndrome that causes her memory to erase every Monday. It’s love at first sight for class bad boy …
The narration makes it clear: the one who gets left behind suffers. A Bejinger named Simon (Xuan Huang) returns to Auckland to make good on a promise to spread the ashes of his late wife Yun (Caiyu Yang) in her favorite place. Characters enter and exit director Xiaogang Feng’s narrative; …
With a depressive bipolar mother (Cynthia Nixon) and a father who stands gelid and forever unconfronted (Pierce Brosnan), it’s no wonder their recently spurned, curly-haired nebbish of a son (Callum Turner) rebounds with the old man’s mistress (Kate Beckinsale). It’s a New York-based romance told in reverse-angles from Marc Webb …
When they’re not pissing out forest fires, a group of misogynistic oafs sit around listening to heavy metal while debating the intellectual capacity of the bar tramps who agree to sleep with them. The only one who seems to be genuinely happily married is retired firefighter Jeff Bridges. Bridges gets …
A drive through the Parisian countryside with Catherine Deneuve at the wheel of director and cowriter Emmanuelle Bercot’s formless flivver. One reel of backstory, another squandered in search of a pack of smokes, and it’s time to gift La Deneuve with a solid audition reel for the American sequel to …
On the basis of direction, we paraphrase RBG — the subject of this no BFD biographical distraction — and shout, “Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker, Pay It Forward), take your foot off the necks of American filmgoers!” This Little Golden Book of a show, expressively indistinguishable from any number of recent …
Korea’s answer to The Wolf of Wall Street (The Phish of Seoul?) is this gatling-gun paced action derby that puts its current Hollywood counterparts to shame. The real villain in the piece is not ex-cop Han (Yo-Han Byun) or even his snakey superior VP Jeon (Kim Mu-yeol in a performance …
The poster art for On the Rocks bears more than a passing resemblance to a moment from Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray’s hit from yesteryear, Lost in Translation. Surely they weren’t trying for a repeat May/December romance this time between Murray and Rashida Jones? Initial relief (the two play father …
A magical staff that once belonged to the deceased father they never knew is left in the care of geeky elf Ian’s bothersome older brother Barley. But it comes with instructions that it be given to the younger brother on the occasion of his 16th birthday, and what’s more, it …