Tag: 2018
-
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is Terry Gilliam’s 8½
If I hadn’t seen The Man Who Killed Don Quixote with my own eyes, I’d have trouble believing it exists. So Terry Gilliam has finally made his Quixote; but it might be more accurate to say that he finally made his 8½. In a way, Gilliam has been making this movie over and over for […]
-
Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018) has less color than the original, but more of everything else
I appreciate that Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is not attempting to copy Dario Argento’s horror classic, per se, but the association immediately pitches a number of disappointments to get over. First, its avoidance of the original’s vivid, lurid color is so aggressive as to be a punk rock statement. The creative choice sets up a dramatic […]
-
Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 traps superheroes in motels and courtrooms
Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 sure went down easy when I saw it in a theater a few months ago, but it suffers on rewatch on the small screen. And needless to say, it was shortly rendered wholly obsolete by the best animated superhero movie of all time, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While the real […]
-
Noomi Rapace shoots ’em up in the Netflix exclusive Close
Noomi Rapace was seemingly set for big things after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo films, but was shortly thereafter cruelly written out of her starring role in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequels. I can only imagine how it must hurt for an actor to “appear” in a sequel only as a corpse, as she did […]
-
Liam Neeson has a rough ride in The Commuter
Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Commuter is the best comedy of 2018. I’m still laughing about the running joke of the Metro North running up the 4/5/6 line in Manhattan. If you find yourself on the Metro North Hudson Line, Make a quick stop in Beacon for a burger at Meyer’s Old Dutch Food & Such; honestly […]
-
Nicolas Cage descends into hell in Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy
Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy is what you would get if you crossed Straw Dogs with Hellraiser, co-directed by Tarkovsky & Jodorowsky. Do you think Clive Barker saw this and said “hey, that’s my thing”? It’s also the rare movie where Nicolas Cage’s customarily crazed mania is juuuuuust right for the material. Whereas his… performative performance (shall […]
-
Mr. Rogers consoles the country in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
It’s a sad state of affairs when a documentary about one of the most simply good people to have ever lived must dedicate screentime to Trump, Brexit, and Fox News, but such is the world that conservatives have made. Even if no mention had been made of current affairs, Won’t You Be My Neighbor would […]
-
Winnie-the-Pooh is a labor reformer in Disney’s Christopher Robin
Given its sluggish pace, depressive tone, and dramatization of the origin of Paid Time Off for postwar UK laborers, whom exactly was the intended audience for Christopher Robin? Kids with premature midlife crises and uncommonly long attention spans? Adults with low vocabularies and an acceptance of brain-bending metaphysics? Think about it too hard, and it’s […]
-
The Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg champions intelligence and equality in the documentary ‘RBG’
One of the greatest living Americans. If anyone deserves to be lionized in a feature-length hagiography, it’s The Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg. In these dark times, it’s heartening to see this unapologetic celebration of one woman’s lifelong championship of American values like fairness, justice, and equality. Glimpses of her personal life prove she also lived […]
-
Teenagers shall inherit the world in Wes Ball’s Maze Runner: The Death Cure
While definitely not in the target audience, and without expressly setting out to do so, I’ve still somehow managed to see all three Maze Runner movies. Their easy availability on streaming services is just too tempting for my chronic addiction to escapist sci-fi. It’s interesting to see how young adult fiction contrives such scenarios where […]