Monthly Archives: June 2016

I love Westerns, love filmmakers who put the time in to get the period detail right. Nothing was clean, from sweaty clothes to dirty faces to green teeth. Pistoleros weren’t likely to hit what they were aiming at quickly and … Continue reading →

I’m a car buff, and have been since childhood. Over the years, I’ve owned muscle cars and Mercs,  econoboxes, hot hatches and Jeeps and Mini Coopers — restored a Triumph TR6, and am just waiting on the day I can get … Continue reading →

The embarrassing lack of diversity in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was nakedly on display this past Oscar season. But the Academy, to its credit, vowed to do something about it, to make its membership look more … Continue reading →

A fairytale-ish musical about troll dolls starring the talking/singing voices of Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake, “Trolls” is a November Dreamworks release relying on names, tunes and toy-branding to attract an audience. Not a laugh is given away in this … Continue reading →

The weeks of abuse for this review of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” seemed like they would go on forever. “Glib facsimile” became an Internet meme. And then, it stopped. Because others came out as thinking the movie was a recycled … Continue reading →

The Ape Man goes into the “Heart of Darkness” in this generation’s version of “The Legend of Tarzan.” Which is an interesting place to park a story and a character fraught with the potential for racist/imperialist undertones from the moment … Continue reading →

A tip of the hat, then, to Brian Tyler, the REAL star of “Now You See Me 2,” a sequel ordained by the same logic that gave us “Neighbors 2.” As in, the first film was just enough of a … Continue reading →

    The Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn makes movies with more tone than tension, more feel than feeling. Every shot is immaculately composed and often held several beats too long. Can’t move on until the viewer’s had a chance to … Continue reading →

  Daniel Radcliffe has his most useful role ever in “Swiss Army Man,” a dark, existential comedy of dizzying originality. Because Radcliffe has the title role, that of a corpse who washes up on a beach to “save” a shipwrecked, … Continue reading →

This is the final trailer, probably, and the last chance, almost certainly, to make a pitch for this late-summer blockbuster. Well-cut, somber, sharp, but there’s no sign of lightness, the flippancy one would expect from a Simon Pegg scripted take … Continue reading →