When pretty white girls are marooned in Mexico, things rarely end well. At least that’s the impression you get from watching too much horror cinema or Nancy Grace. In an agonizing example of the former, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and her sister Kate (Claire Holt), the suffering couple at the center of 47 Meters Down, decide to spruce up their south-of-the-border getaway by cage-diving … [Read more...]
‘It Comes at Night’ gives paranoia a grim, powerful thrust
In most genres, "it" is a benign pronoun. In horror, it is a manifestation of the indescribable — your worst nightmares incarnate. In Stephen King’s It, which will finally lurk onto the big screen in September, the title being is a clownlike manifestation of the inner demons of childhood. Larry Cohen’s cult curio It’s Alive! interpreted the pronoun more directly: That’s the … [Read more...]
‘Wonder Woman’: An honest-to-gods feminist superhero
The superhero origin story is the most durably familiar of the comic-book tent pole narratives. Even the best ones spin off the same formula: The naïve title character discovers her powers, trains exhaustively, learns the power-hungry ways of mortals, and grows virtually indestructible until she finally meets her match against an arch-villain bent on world domination. The final … [Read more...]
Punches in pedestrian ‘Chuck’ rarely land
The road of the almost famous is paved with frustration, resentment, anxiety and, for a certain type of self-destructive personality, awfully bad behavior. That’s the lasting takeaway of Chuck, an otherwise pedestrian biopic of the former heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner. A New Jersey pugilist known around his community for his “dirty” style in the ring and his loose blood … [Read more...]
‘The Wall’: War and mind games, in a tight space
The Wall is as lean and economical as a war movie can be. There is one location, no musical score and three speaking parts, only two of which come from actors that appear onscreen. The film is 81 minutes, and it feels like it — a refreshing break from the increasing bloat of studio actioners. Set in a tumbleweedy, post-“Mission Accomplished” Iraqi oilfield in 2007, The Wall … [Read more...]
‘A Quiet Passion’: A compelling study of artistic vision, personal suffering
“I wish I could feel as others do, but it is not possible,” says a teenage Emily Dickinson. She’s standing alone in front of the headmistress of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, in the opening scene of Terence Davis’ haunting A Quiet Passion. The rest of her classmates have, at the headmistress’ request, divided into two camps: Those ready to be good Christians and be saved … [Read more...]
Misguided direction makes ‘The Dinner’ none too edible
The structure of Oren Moverman’s The Dinner is, appropriately enough, prandial. It begins, roughly, with an aperitif, and concludes shortly after a digestif at an uber-luxurious prix fixe restaurant, the sort of dimly lit culinary castle where a wine is selected for each course, where the waiters explain the provenance of the garnish, and where the bill costs as much as an … [Read more...]
‘Norman’: A hollow man gets an empty character study
Norman Oppenheimer, Richard Gere’s title character in writer-director Joseph Cedar’s new movie, is a walking LinkedIn, if LinkedIn had defective code. Norman lives to connect people. Self-servingly curious, he’s a relentless interrogator of everyone he meets — he’s the mosquito that won’t leave you alone — until his marks end up accepting his card, or a bribe, or a dinner … [Read more...]
Visual poetry gives ‘Lost City of Z’ its epic passport
Depending on whom you ask, director James Gray (We Own the Night, The Immigrant) is either his generation’s Kubrick — a dogged, uncompromising auteur of narcotized mood pieces — or a ponderous, inert storyteller with an elegant camera eye. Whatever your opinion of the polarizing filmmaker, he’s an unlikely choice for The Lost City of Z (pronounced “zed”), an adaptation of … [Read more...]
Kore-eda’s ‘After the Storm’ a deft look at a man adrift
Long championed as his generation’s Yasujiro Ozu, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Like Father Like Son) makes grown-up films about flawed families, often centering on how we deal with death and other life changes. He’s not an Ozu mimic — he doesn’t share the late master’s formal rigor — but both directors were/are wise beyond their years. They’re both particularly … [Read more...]