Screen
Dumb wolf in smart sheep’s clothes
To review The Wolf of Wall Street at this stage of the game is to enter into a narrative feud with able critical champions on both sides...
When death misses
There was a scene, lo those many (OK, 11) years ago, in the original Final Destination. One of the characters who inadvertently “cheated death” and ruined “death’s grand design” had holed up in a cabin, which then had to be made accident-proof...
The space between
Ad Astra, the latest from filmmaker par excellence James Gray, opens with a shot of the cosmos, vast and terrifying. As the camera pans...
In space, particles accelerate you
At this rate, the next installment in the Cloverfield pseudo-franchise is going to suddenly appear as just a memory of you having seen the...
No longer man’s best friend
White God is a coat of many colors. It is an allegory, a horror movie, a science fiction tale and a satire, placing dogs in the role of oppressed humans to address animalistic aggressions. In every society there is a desire to control. There is also a resistance to ...
Guilty of misdirection
Conviction should have been a good film. After a woman’s beloved ne’erdo-well brother is convicted of murder in a tiny hick town, it’s up to her to exonerate him, first through the system and then by going to law school and becoming a one-client attorney. Better yet...
Friendly skies ‘Up In The Air’
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has a job that keeps him flying 200 days/ year in Up In The Air — he’s a corporate downsizer brought in to fire excess employees. It’s a tough job and Bingham has made a career out of detaching, disassociating from anything that could ...
Review: The Portal: A Cosmic Rock Odyssey
Billed as modern interpretation of a classic shamanic journey, The Portal: A Cosmic Rock Odyssey combines film, music and lighting to try and create a surreal, out-of-body, perhaps even religious experience for its audience. In the case of the audience at the Boulder...
