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Vote for Joe Biden & Kamala Harris
I clearly remember the November day four years ago, waiting in a line stretching around the block to vote for what would/should have been the first woman President of the United States. Very late that evening, we sat at home weeping in front of the television. I know it amuses Trump supporters to picture “libs” […]
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L.A. Takedown is the rough draft for Michael Mann’s masterpiece Heat
I finally, finally, finally had the opportunity to cross L.A. Takedown off my movie watchlist — a largely unavailable holy grail that I’ve been desperately curious to see for years. If director Michael Mann had not reworked this material into the masterpiece Heat, L.A. Takedown would probably be pushed so far down his IMDB or Letterboxd listings that […]
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Daylight is anti-city-living propaganda
The best part of every disaster movie is the opening montage depicting unrelated people boarding the boat that’s going to sink, the airplane that’s going to crash on a desert island, the tower that’s going to inferno, or the bus that’s going to be hijacked in an overly complicated scheme by a charismatic villain. These […]
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Motherless Brooklyn is a civics lesson wrapped in an actorly exercise
I understand the generally negative reception that Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn encountered, but I didn’t dislike it for two very mundane reasons: 1. I happened to watch it in the middle of binging HBO’s Perry Mason miniseries (with which it coincidentally happens to have a great deal in common), and frankly, Motherless Brooklyn comes out on top. […]
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Toys shoot to kill in G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Jon M. Chu’s 2013 toy-based sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation is inappropriately cruel for a movie based on children’s toys/cartoons/comics, in which nobody ever really got hurt. The gun fetishism is unsurprising, but it is surprising that its heroes and villains both shoot to kill. There’s a spectacular amount of onscreen death: first half the cast, […]
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The Hunt is weak tea, at a time that calls for strong coffee
I watched Craig Zobel’s The Hunt mostly out of curiosity, to see what the red hats were so worked up about. Turns out it is not what today’s generation of American fascists assumed, but neither is it otherwise. There is potential for satire somewhere in the premise, but it’s too confused and unfocused to be […]
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Interstellar is a yet another time twisty Nolan scenario
The torturously complex premise of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar requires a constant stream of exposition throughout, something I don’t recall being a problem in the director’s other time twisty scenarios like The Prestige and Inception. It’s also less emotionally urgent than either, perhaps indicating that the high-concept structure overwhelmed everything else. If Coop (Matthew McConaughey) — […]
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What are men, compared to rocks and mountains: Pride & Prejudice
Who doesn’t have great affection for the beloved 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? But: I daresay Joe Wright’s 2005 feature film adaptation (the one with the ampersand) is my P&P. It may be less faithful to the text, but that’s fine; it’s its own thing. It’s delicious and I adore it. I think of it […]
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Elisabeth Moss has a villain problem in The Invisible Man
For a movie named after the antagonist, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has a villain problem. At one point, Cecelia (Elisabeth Moss) asks an interesting question: her husband is famous and wealthy, and can have anyone — so why her? In one question, she essentially admits her longstanding insecurity at having a handsome rich man […]
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Brad Pitt works out his daddy issues in space, in Ad Astra
Maybe this isn’t fair, but I couldn’t help but associate Ad Astra with Joker. If Joker is a shallow remix of Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, Ad Astra is a bland smoothie of Solaris and Apocalypse Now, with a cavalcade of stars you may remember from Space Cowboys and Armageddon. I half expected Harrison […]
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Terminator: Dark Fate is a trashcan of exposition
Criticizing the plots of popcorn action blockbusters is usually a fool’s errand. Nobody cares if Hobbs & Shaw makes any sense, but surely it’s fair game in the Terminator franchise, where untangling pseudo-scientific time travel logic is 99% of the fun. So the biggest disappointment of Dark Fate (other than its singularly unmemorable title, and […]
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Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die is an unaffectionate homage
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that Jim Jarmusch would make a zombie movie, since he’s already cycled through idiosyncratic interpretations of westerns (Dead Man), vampires (Only Lovers Left Alive), samurai (Ghost Dog), and thrillers (The Limits of Control). But unlike these, The Dead Don’t Die reads as an unaffectionate (or to coin a word, […]