Dylan (Michiel Huisman) likes the stability of life. He sees patterns in everything. It fits perfectly with his air traffic control gig, even when he almost kills 900 people in a nearly botched landing.
On this plane is his new love interest Sarah (Teresa Palmer). They meet at the hilariously-named air ballet “Beginnings,” in which they Continue reading 2:22 (2017) Movie Review
Okja is an elephant-sized genetically modified pig, raised for 10 years by Mija (Seo-Hyun Ahn) and her grandfather in the Korean mountains. To one, Okja is a giant teddy bear of a pet. To another, namely the head of the company that created him Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), it is a massive money-making food commodity.
Okja is, once it gets going, a chase film involving three (eventually two) parties. This chase cuts through a narrative with tropes of coming of age and satire, neither of which reach their full potential.
If the indelible adorableness of Okja does not get to your heart, then this story may Continue reading Okja (2017) Movie Review
The setup to Win it All, the new film from director Joe Swanberg who co-wrote the film with its star Jake Johnson, is an anticipatory slippery slope. Compulsive gambler Eddie (Johnson) is left with a shady bag of cash. We know what is about to happen. He knows it too, repeating “Oh, no” with a nervous dread.
Eddie starts on an uptick. An on-screen counter shows us as he Continue reading Win it All (2017) Movie Review
In a wooded hideaway in Virginia is a school for girls led by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman). Three years deep into the Civil War, Confederate patrols make their way through the area frequently, but Martha and the girls also lie in fear of potential Yankee parties. They whisper stories of Union soldiers raping Southern women, painting uncivilized pictures of the unseen army.
It is understandable, then, that the inhabitants of the plantation take to wounded soldier Cpl. John McBurney (Colin Farrell) with Continue reading The Beguiled (2017) Movie Review
Scott (Will Ferrell) and Kate (Amy Poehler) Johansen need money for their daughter’s (Ryan Simpkins) college tuition. The city council-sponsored scholarship she was supposed to earn was pulled due to budget cuts. Scott and Kate fail to get raises at their respective workplaces.
Then there’s Frank (Jason Mantzoukas), the gambling and internet porn addict best friend of Scott whose wife has left him. In shambles, all Frank wants is to Continue reading The House (2017) Movie Review
Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a getaway driver. He works under Kevin Spacey’s Doc, a heist mastermind who never works with the same crew twice but who considers Baby his lucky charm. A lucky charm that he has under his thumb thanks to a juvenile mistake that Baby pulled on him at a young age.
Baby is the eccentric protagonist and your archetypal “mysterious quiet type” character. After an accident left him both orphaned and ailed by tinnitus, Baby lives Continue reading Baby Driver (2017) Movie Review
Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut as a feature director came in the form of the genre-bending vampire romance film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The film, shot in supple black and white over a soundtrack of trance-inducing electronica and angsty punk, was a beautiful piece about maintaining relationships in an environment rife with isolation.
On paper, Amirpour’s second film The Bad Batch exists in a similar world. Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is released from “Bad Batch” prison into the desert wilderness of the Texas-Mexico border.
A dystopian world in which cannibalism is a viable form of survivable (viable to the point of being morally questionable as opposed to morally intolerable), isolation is all Arlen has. Especially after she is captured by a family of cannibals and Continue reading The Bad Batch (2017) Movie Review
Transformers: The Last Knight is, surprisingly, a movie.
The film is a direct sequel to Transformers: Age of Extinction, not that that is important. Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), leader of the Autobots, is adrift in space, frosted over in route to his homeworld.
And he will remain frosted over for most of the movie.
Meanwhile, on Earth, various humans have agendas related to Transformers and Continue reading Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) Movie Review
Colossal masquerades itself as a certain type of movie. It opens on the ominous, lingering image of a Kaiju-like monster. Then, sweeping shots of the New York skyline play out over a driving, Dark Knight trilogy-esque score. Then, Gloria (Anne Hathaway) enters, hungover and rambling thinly-veiled excuses to her boyfriend (Dan Stevens) about where she has been.
It doesn’t quite match the previously set tone, does it?
When her boyfriend leaves her due to her drinking problem, Gloria moves back to her hometown, where she falls in with an old friend named Oscar (Jason Sudeikis). An old friend who just so happens to own his father’s bar.
Remember that Kaiju that I mentioned earlier? Whelp…turns out it pantomimes the actions of Gloria when she sets foot on a playground she knew once as a child. It pantomimes everything, including Continue reading Colossal (2017) Movie Review
At first, All Eyez On Me, the new biopic on rap sensation Tupac Shakur (Demetrius Shipp Jr.), comes off as a film trying to be efficiently synoptic, if not a bit rushed in getting to the point.
Within 15 minutes, we watch Tupac’s pregnant mother (played with a tenacious vigor by Danai Gurira) being released from prison, Tupac growing up in a family being watched by the FBI for Black Panther and perhaps criminal affiliations, and moving to Baltimore where his love of poetry and Shakespeare eventually leads to his rap career (once he moves again, this time to Oakland).
This is the first half of the first act. The film runs rampant with Continue reading All Eyez On Me (2017) Movie Review
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