Excerpt: Joe and Anthony Russo treat the material with a flashy visual style which, combined with Holland’s constant narration, give the impression the film was adapted from a graphic novel or comic – perhaps a grittier approach was in order here.
Excerpt: a flat-footed attempt to apply Soderbergh’s “Traffic” supply chain approach to the current opioid epidemic. Ironically the best performance is featured in the least believable of Jarecki’s three story strands.
Excerpt: As on the nose and didactic as it is breathtaking in its aesthetics, Elysium (2013) has been a mixed bag since day one. But it’s the most fascinating kind of mixed bag — one that swings wildly between unquestionable disappointment and absolute confirmation of writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s unique mastery of visual effects and design.
Excerpt: The cinematographic style of So Evil My Love is noir (so many shadows!), but the plot is pure melodrama, a much-maligned genre which has proven enduringly popular with audiences.
Excerpt: Today, it’s most interesting as a product of its time, and as an example of a film that showed off the strong points of the studio system—a ready supply of talented actors, reliably good sets and props, and fine technical work from the likes of cinematographer Paul Ivano, editor Arthur Hilton, and composer Frank Skinner.
Excerpt: End of the Line presents a strong case for a righteous cause, and makes its points all the more effectively because it’s an absolutely beautiful film.
Excerpt: A same-old tale of apocalypse knows we’ve seen this all before, and so centers human drama over disaster porn. It has nothing new to say, but at least it says it well, with notes of horrific grace.
Excerpt: An incoming comet transforms your neighbors into desperate housewives and propels another Gerard Butler low-grade action flick. Disaster porn aficionados delight; everyone else, leave Greenland where it is – remote and inaccessible.
Excerpt: Knowing the carnage still to come, it was refreshing to meet the Garrity family as a group of regular people that will simply have to try and survive.
Excerpt: A disaster-thriller that champions humanity over calamity, ‘Greenland’ is a welcome reminder of the oft-out-of-nowhere thrills that await us at the cineplexes.
Excerpt: There are echoes of many great films and filmmakers in Glass’s work – Polanski’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Repulsion,’ Stanley Kubrick, ‘The Exorcist’ and even Lars von Trier. And yet her film never feels derivative.
Excerpt: The whole therefore becomes like one of the tornadoes spinning in Maud’s view. It tightens and tightens before touching down to wreak its havoc.
Excerpt: Expertly building suspense and tension – and popping that bubble perfectly with some of the most effective jump scares of recent memory – ‘Saint Maud’ has all the markings of a horror great, with a killer ending to boot.
Excerpt: On the plus side, the opening credits sequence is quite nice, the costumes and sets are convincing in a television budget sort of way, and there’s enough cleverness in the way the story is spun out, with a nice little button at the end, to make it satisfying.
Excerpt: Newly issued on a blu-ray packed with extras by Arrow Video, it is fascinating to regard the work of director Chan-wook Park (“Oldboy,” “The Handmaiden”) before his vengeance trilogy catapulted him to global recognition.
Excerpt: Some of the sets from Frankenstein were re-used for this film, and Whale’s characteristic nods to German Expressionism, the care he takes with every shot, and the racy content smuggled in so you can see it if you want to, and miss it if you don’t, makes this more than just a studio obligation fulfilled.
Excerpt: If you were to sit down and watch every film below, you would be taken from rural towns in the heart of the Florida peninsula to rural towns in the heart of the Ukraine via the protests of Hong Kong and a nursing home in Chile. There are serious themes, important subjects, powerful ideas… and hand sanitizer. There’s also a stripper named Nomi. Something for everything, I reckon…
Excerpt: [The students] They’re also aware that their achievements may not be the only thing that matter when it comes to getting into the college of their choice, and that their high school and ancestry may be working against them.
Excerpt: Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges propel a mismatched cast of oddballs reveling in an absurd situation looking for a cat who contains the consciousness of the dead husband. Thank goodness it’s not something off-the-wall or unbelievable.
Excerpt: The religious overtones come towards the end of this searing examination of racial politics during the 1960s. And when they arrive, in a sequence that is most assuredly a shout-out to the Last Supper, director/co-writer Shaka King has earned the right, and then some, to invoke the metaphor
Excerpt: If you don’t know about the 1969 murder of Chicago Black Panthers Chairman Fred Hampton at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover, prepare to be shocked. If you do know the story, prepare to watch this film with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Excerpt: Shaka King has made a powerful film about loyalty and treachery and the continuing struggle for Black self-determination. In the wake of the George Floyd protests of last summer, which drew attention to state-sanctioned violence and murder perpetrated against Black people, King’s movie is as timely as ever.
