Certainly, director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal had the finest intentions in making Detroit, which is too bad for them. Because the one specific thing that Detroit most badly wants to do is the one thing that Detroit most particularly fails to achieve – indeed, it achieves something close to the exact opposite. The […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: after many, many years, Stephen King’s most monumental work, The Dark Tower, is finally seeing the first fraction of […]
Girls Trip – a title in desperate, aching need of an apostrophe, but that’s neither here nor there – is made out of stock ingredients, and nothing can change that. But then, comfort food is by design made out of stock ingredients, and Girls Trip is supremely comforting. “The uptight one, the one with a […]
We come now to one of the odder curlicues in the world of Amityvillania, a film that I wasn’t sure I was going to include in this retrospective until the moment before I hit “play”. I speak of My Amityville Horror, a 2012 documentary (and a little bit to my surprise, I don’t even feel […]
A review requested by Will Beckley, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. 25th Hour is a great curiosity in Spike Lee’s filmography: it feels, to watch it, like an extremely important and personal film to him, in which the director is unloading all his anxiety and anger and […]
I’m going to throw all caution to the wind and declare that The Emoji Movie has the worst concept of any film ever given a wide release in the United States of America. I try not to hold concepts against movies: it’s all about the execution, and you can make any movie sound ridiculous if […]
Goddammit, but I wish A Ghost Story was a masterpiece. It comes real close. The opening half of writer-director David Lowery’s 92-minute feature is a marvel and then some, marshaling some highly idiosyncratic cinematography, sound design, and performances in the creation of a breathtakingly good exploration of different forms of existential loneliness. And the second […]
I’ll say right out that if you’re the kind of person for whom “style over substance” is a bad thing, you’ll certainly have less of a good time with Atomic Blonde than I had (and I had a very good time indeed – it’s my favorite movie of summer 2017 to date). The film is […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: the makers of Atomic Blonde have decided, correctly I think, that Charlize Theron is due for a hand-to-hand combat […]
