In the Shadow of the Moon is the sum of many parts that don’t quite add up. Part crime noir, part action film and part sci-fi adventure, Moon resembles The Terminator cross-pollinated with Seven, yet never quite matching either film’s punch. Director Jim Mickle has balanced genres before, with standout movies including Cold in July …
Zach Galifianakis to Matthew McConaughey: “All right, all right, all right. Sorry, I was just reading the box office returns for your last three movies…Of all the things you can win an Oscar for, how surprised are you that you won one for acting?” Aesthetically speaking, Between Two Ferns: The Movie isn’t much to look …
Hollywood could use a hero. After a forgettable summer at the box office, the movie industry is looking for an autumn resurgence in ticket sales. With the box office at $3.9 billion for summer 2019, Hollywood registered its second-worst season in theaters in 12 years. And coming back to match last year’s pace won’t be …
In 1980, while promoting his film The Shining, Stanley Kubrick gave a rare interpretation of one of his movie endings — in this case the 1921 photo at the end of the film that suggested that Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) had been part of the Overlook Hotel for decades. “The ballroom photograph at …
(Warning: series spoilers ahead) The last time we saw him, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) was barreling through a chain-link gate in his El Camino, half-laughing, half-crying after being sprung from his neo-Nazi captors by Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in a drug house bloodbath in the Breaking Bad finale. But where did Jesse go? Did Walter …
In 2013, Steve Coogan starred in a gem of a movie, Alan Partridge, about a self-centered disc jockey struggling with age, sagging ratings and the looming reality that a new generation had left him behind. While he played an egomaniac, the film deftly offset Partridge’s boorishness with sincere British charm — along with perhaps the best …
Netflix has been thriving on the woman-in-peril sub-genre of filmmaking. It found an unexpected smash in Birdbox, starring Sandra Bullock as a mother fleeing unseen demons. It bought the TV show You, a half-season flop about a stalker boyfriend, from the Lifetime network and turned it into a series already greenlit for a second season. Which …
Here’s the recipe for a summer buddy-cop film. One guy, usually the cop, is as big as a house with an inclination to break things: rules, orders, villains’ faces. The other guy is typically much smaller and much funnier and kind of goofy — and he’s driving the other guy nuts, even as circumstances …
What do you call a movie that is so well-meaning it’s hard to criticize, yet so sporadic in execution it’s hard to be effusive? In this case, you call it Skin in the Game, a nobly-intended thriller about human trafficking that tackles an issue long deserving big-screen Hollywood treatment, but undercut by tropes that veer it …
It’s can be difficult to watch When They See Us, but it’s certainly not for lack of craftsmanship. Ava DuVernay’s direction and writing pulls no punches in laying out the harrowing events endured by the Central Park Five while adding a necessary layer of humanity to their story that challenges viewers to reconsider what it means …
