Screen
The problem with pulling your punches
When Wonder Woman sailed into theaters this summer, coolly breaking superhero box office record after box office record, it was no surprise that curious...
We’ve always been this dirty
Not unlike the year 2016 in politics, writer/director Dee Rees’ adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s novel, Mudbound, starts off as a slow, plodding look at...
Circular logic
Writer/director Rian Johnson is fantastic at making pretty good movies. 2005’s Brick was a slyly conceived yarn that took 1940s private dick dialogue and plot and affixed them to a modern high-school setting, with middling effect. 2008’s The Brothers Bloom was a ...
The Bard via gnomes
Two households, both alike in dignity / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny...
Out of the past
Mamma Roma has paid her dues and done her time. For nearly 30 years, she walked the sweaty streets of Rome, turning tricks and...
‘And she was loved!’
With the wisdom of the wise and the smile of a sage, Toni Morrison sits before the camera. No background behind her, nothing in...
Realism thwarted
Made with or without U.S. Department of Defense cooperation, fictional films about the American military favor narratives in which (mostly) men buck authority, risk their necks in bouts of jealous infighting and go the lone-wolf route in pursuit of the enemy. Act ...
‘Keanu’ is bloated ‘Key & Peele,’ for better or worse
You either find it unbearably funny that a suburban dad named Clarence finds himself in a strip club called HPV surrounded by hardcore gangsters...
One last toast to the wunderkind
Let us raise our cups. Standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, and drink together. ... To the movies....
You’re standing on my neck
The year was 1997. Hanson’s “MMMBop” was jostling with Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” for the top spot on the charts, Bill Clinton’s “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky were still private, and an MTV animated cult hit about two morons in high school called Beavis and ...
