Southpaw is a boxing picture with Jake Gyllenhaal. I can save us all a bunch of time, because everything else – every damn thing – is just wallpaper. I suppose I could specify that it is primarily a The Champ-model boxing picture, about the boxer’s relationship to his family, far more than it is a […]
There are movies that are showcases for a bravura performance, and then there are bravura performances in search of a movie, and in the case of the bafflingly bad Legend, we see the latter. Tom Hardy is great – it would be disingenuous and stupid to deny that he’s not terrific as gangster twins Reggie […]
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, might truly be the most narcissistic vanity project of all time. By the Sea finds Angeline Jolie Pitt (I’m thoroughly discombobulated by her new surname, incidentally) writing and directing the story of an unhappily married, couple played by herself and Brad Pitt, grousing around the French Riviera, and […]
There are certain casting choices that are so ineffably perfect that it’s impossible for the reality to match up to the fantasy one concocts upon learning of them. “Ian McKellen as a geriatric Sherlock Holmes in 1947” is, for me, one such bit of casting, and sure enough, Mr. Holmes (for that is the movie […]
There are more good things than bad about Spotlight – in fact, there are very few bad things about it at all – but I frankly think the best thing about it is the way it has redeemed the career of writer-director Tom McCarthy. You will maybe recall, how McCarthy started making movies with 2003’s […]
The tyranny of awards-season chatter is that it reduces interesting movies to uninteresting horse race conversation, so let’s get the dull part out of the way: yes, Brie Larson is fantastic in Room. This is only surprising if you haven’t been paying attention. Brie Larson is always fantastic. She was fantastic in Don Jon, where […]
It’s of course lazy and arguably bigoted, speaking to a cramped sample set, to suggest that Italian Filmmaker A and Italian Filmmaker B resemble each other in no small part because they are both Italian. But it is a national cinema that particularly favors enormous, lavish spectacle, and there’s never been a point since WWII […]
