Through the endless minutes of exposition at the front-end of The Titan, we hear a lot of what we have heard before in dystopian science fiction. Population is rising, while resources are dwindling. Pressures for survival have lit up violent conflicts across the world. Scientists and military personnel are desperate for a solution. Terraforming Saturn’s moon, Titan. Biogenetic enhancements to survive such a move. Medical trials gone wrong. Yadda yadda.
Rick Janssen (Sam Worthington) is one of these test subjects. A military man who was once thought MIA while in the Syrian desert, it is this incident that convinces the government that he is Continue reading The Titan (2018) Movie Review→
Bjorn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) is the number one ranked tennis player in the world. The only thing between him and winning a fifth straight Wimbledon is American John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf). McEnroe is an outspoken, emotional player who doesn’t follow the decorum of the sport.
Borg, on the other hand, is soft-spoken. He lacks emotion. He is very particular about his play and his fame, which he actively avoids. He is the apparent antithesis of McEnroe in almost every respect. Except, of course, that they both Continue reading Borg vs. McEnroe (2018) Movie Review→
Rampage is a 1980s arcade game in which three giant, mutated animals—a gorilla, a lizard, and a wolf—stomp through city skylines. The monsters tear down buildings, destroy military vehicles, and eat people. All for points. The game was popular enough to be ported over to multiple video game consoles.
The video game has no story and few characters (the monsters are given names, at least). Yet, somehow, Hollywood has managed to give the intellectual property both of these things. At least, enough of these things to produce a marketable movie.
A band of robbers hide away in a hamlet in the Mediterranean desert after stowing 250 kilos worth of gold bars in the trunk of their car and picking up a family of hitchhikers on their way back from the heist. Two police officers show up, and the whole thing devolves into a shootout.
It is an exceedingly simple premise to a film, one that reeks of a cliched action-crime genre re-hash. But Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan is anything but simple, and Continue reading Let the Corpses Tan (2018) Movie Review→
Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm) is a negotiator. In 1972, he works for the U.S. government in Beirut. At a dinner party, he sums up the situation in Lebanon by calling the country a “boarding house without a landlord” that was thrown into confusion when the Palestinians “moved in.”
He continues talking in this politically-savvy way, as if he understands that the country is headed toward civil war. When he is brought back to Beirut 10 years later, however, he seems surprised at what he sees when he touches down.
In 1972, at the aforementioned dinner party, a person close to him is killed in the crossfire of a shootout. In 1982, Skiles is tasked with Continue reading Beirut (2018) Movie Review→
Marlo (Charlize Theron) is about to give birth to her third child. One of her other children, Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), acts out, causing Marlo problems at home and at Jonah’s school. He is described as “quirky,” a word that ultimately means little and does nothing to ease Marlo’s troubles.
Marlo’s husband Drew (Ron Livingston) continues working when Marlo goes on paternity leave (which she begins just three days before her due date). When he comes home, he helps the kids with their homework and then disappears behind a video game controller and headset. All the while, Marlo is Continue reading Tully (2018) Movie Review→
The rape-revenge genre is certainly not the most approachable one. It is one of the more controversial, to be certain. A squeamish one, for sure. Rarely can a film in this genre be called “fun.”
At its most primal, Coralie Fargeat’s debut feature Revenge is a bloody good time. In the tradition of its New French Extremity predecessors, the film goes full throttle into a place best described with words like Continue reading Revenge (2018) Movie Review→
Many choice words have been used in describing Wes Anderson and his body of work. One of the more apt descriptors is “meticulous.” With Isle of Dogs, the director’s second foray into the realm of stop motion animation, meticulous is perhaps an understatement.
The first sequence in A Quiet Place is one of the more immediately tense openings to a horror movie in recent memory. Without fully understanding the world, we understand almost from the first shot what sort of situation we have entered into. The film opens in an abandoned pharmacy, where a family is quietly perusing the aisles for supplies. The family speaks only in sign language, even though only the daughter (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf. It is clear that something bad comes with too much noise, so they don’t make a sound.
The main conversation surrounding Chappaquiddick, the drama from John Curran detailing the events following the drunk driving accident perpetrated by Ted Kennedy that cost Robert Kennedy campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne her life, is a political one. A political film breeding political conversation; the equation makes sense.
Apparently the liberal creatives behind the film are frustrated with the lack of liberal media attention for the film, and the conservative audience is the one championing the film for not sugar-coating the incident—although, to play devil’s advocate to the IndieWire piece, a good number of liberal-minded critics have given the film positive reviews.
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