To this introverted writer, there are few prospects scarier than appearing on a stage and trying to make people laugh. Alex Novak, Will Arnett’s newly separated father of two in Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, whose day job, we are told simply, is “finance,” might have shared such trepidation at one time. But when he shuffles onto the stage of a comedy club’s open-mic … [Read more...]
‘Jurassic World Dominion’: Franchise’s ‘final’ film overstuffed and clunky, but still has some teeth
Nostalgia, as they say, never goes out of style. And in a pop-culture space increasingly populated by aging Gen-Xers and millennials with time on their hands, affection for the more sanguine 1990s has reached its pinnacle of saturation. The X-Files, Sex and the City, Friends, Scream — and we might as well throw the box office-crushing Top Gun in there because it’s close enough … [Read more...]
‘Little Women’: A masterful, ravishing vision of young adulthood
I’m either the best or the worst person to review the latest adaptation of Little Women. I’ve not seen any of the previous seven adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age family saga — not even the George Cukor; heresy, I know — nor have I read the book. Which is to say that you won’t find any gripes regarding the latest iteration’s fealty to the source, or, … [Read more...]
Masterful ‘Marriage Story’ gets power from little heartbreaks
The last time Scarlett Johansson traversed a void of frame-filling darkness, she was a voluptuous alien consuming eager men like so much protein in 2013’s Under the Skin. In the opening fade-in of Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, she is once again a figure framed in absolute blackness, a light emerging from its absence in glorious medium shot. It’s almost religious, like one … [Read more...]
‘The Founder’: Burgers and fries, ruthlessly delivered
Hollywood, land of stick figures and kale salads, has not been kind to poor McDonald’s and its 300 billion burgers sold. From direct hits like Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock’s grandstanding overture into the pop-doc genre, to indirect slams like Fast Food Nation, with its grimace-worthy evidence of cow feces making its way into the meat grinders of megachains like so much … [Read more...]