Film Reviews
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Is Too Haunted By the Past to Feel Fresh: Review
The Pitch: Trying to tell a really good 21st century Ghostbusters story seems to be an enterprise guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy. Which already makes Ghostbusters: Afterlife a depressing venture right out of the gate; one can almost sense director Jason Reitman screaming from the sidelines, “Are you nerds happy now?!?” Unfortunately, as much as Afterlife openly seeks to draw upon nostalgia for the original, a lot of fans may find the taste of their youth to be curdled by the level of pandering involved. Things begin with the reveal that one of the original Ghostbusters (the movie gets a bit coy about this, but it’s Egon Spengler, who was played by the recently deceased Harold Ramis) had left his friends and moved to Summerville, Oklahoma in the years before his death. Following...
9 Reasons to Watch Red Notice, a Movie Where Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds Do Art Crime Together
Got to say this for Red Notice — it knows exactly what kind of a movie it is: a mashup of a classic caper tale and Indiana Jones that’s fully aware of how the star power involved will draw people in, and thus makes sure to put said stars (Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot) front and center. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber also makes sure that all 118 minutes of the film move along at a brisk pace, with plenty of action set-pieces, twists, and heist hijinks along the way. Things begin with notorious art thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) attempting to steal one of the three legendary (and incredibly valuable) eggs of Cleopatra, with special agent John Hartley (Johnson) determined to track him down and stop him, building up to a globe-trotting adventure packed with legitimately laugh-o...
Stallone’s Recut Rocky IV Has More Heart, But Less Charm: Review
The Pitch: In 1985, Rocky IV was released to box office success (netting $300 million, the most the series has ever earned), but critical derision. It’s no surprise, either; the film, which tracks Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) as he seeks revenge against Russian superman Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) for the death of his friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), was the ultimate jump-the-shark moment for a series that had heretofore mixed taut boxing action with comparatively tamped-down character drama. It’s a thorn that’s clearly been stuck in Stallone’s paw for 35 years, and with the creative idleness that came with the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 seemed as good a time as any to pick it back up and revisit it. And so, we have Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago – The Director’s Cut, a dra...
Eternals’ Abundance of Heroes Can’t Fight Through Its Dense Exposition: Review
The Pitch: For millennia, intergalactic beings known as Eternals have defended humanity from the predatory Deviants. Once their mission is complete, however, they’re left stranded on Earth, living amongst humans through the ages as they watch our evolution while holding firm to their code of non-interference. That is, until their ancient enemies return, signaling the emergence of an even graver threat. With their family separated across the globe, Eternals Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), and Sprite (Lia McHugh) must bring the team back together to resume their purpose. This may not be the happy reunion they’d hoped for, though, as revelations about their own pasts may redirect their future — as well as our planet’s. Sir, See the Potential: On paper, there’s a ton to be excited...
NYFF Review: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Is Spectacular — And Spectacularly Underwhelming
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel Dune gets its second big-screen treatment. The first was a notorious misfire directed by David Lynch, who famously disowned the final film; the newer version is from Denis Villeneuve, who has experience with sci-fi both emotionally intimate (Arrival) and storied in its nerdy history (Blade Runner 2049). Though the politics and world-building of the Dune world can seem obtuse — the names alone present a challenge for the less sci-fi-inclined — its story will also have a familiar ring for anyone who’s absorbed a few of the many works the novel influenced. Advertisement Related Video In other words, yes, it’s a chosen-one narrative: Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), a young...
Nashville Film Festival Review: Spencer Is a Devastating Portrait of the People’s Princess
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Nashville Film Festival. The Pitch: Over the course of three days, Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Spencer) is faced with a decision that will inevitably change her fate: continue living in near agony among the royal family, or separate from her husband? History already knows the answer, leaving an air of tragedy even in moments of small victory and stolen joy for Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart, as striking in her portrayal as early reactions indicated). “It’s three days,” Diana whispers to herself early in the film. Those three days prove to be a trial more difficult than even she had anticipated. Advertisement Related Video Heavy Is the Head That Wears the Crown: One of the first shots of Pablo Larraín’s film takes place in a massive ...
NYFF Review: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Avuncular for the Warm, Low-Key C’mon C’mon
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Every five years or so, Mike Mills — not the one from R.E.M., though, confusingly, he is a music video director and graphic designer for some of their contemporaries — releases a sensitive, heartfelt drama about delicate but deceptively strong family ties. C’mon C’mon is the 2021 model, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a documentarian who must unexpectedly spend several weeks taking care of his nine-year-old nephew. I’ll Figure It Out: “Nobody knows what they’re doing. You just have to keep doing it.” That’s advice given late in C’mon C’mon by Viv (Gaby Hoffman) to her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) as he struggles to figure out how to substitute-parent her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman). Viv has been c...
Halloween Kills… The Franchise, To Be Specific: Review
The Pitch: It’s the late hours of Halloween night 2018, and Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) house is still aflame from trapping Michael Myers in a flaming prison she’s spent decades building. But even that’s not enough to kill the soulless demon monster with a penchant for homicide; he escapes with nary a scratch on him, save for some scorch marks on his William Shatner mask. As daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) rush an injured Laurie to the hospital, the rest of Haddonfield learns of the asylum bus crash that led to Michael’s escape, and a mob forms to try to catch the killer. But will strength in numbers be enough to vanquish pure evil? Halloween Persists: In the age of “legacyquels,” followups to nostalgic hits from the ’70s and ’80s that...
NYFF Review: Benedict Cumberbatch is a Macho, Petulant Cowboy in The Power of the Dog
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Acclaimed writer-director Jane Campion adapts the semi-obscure 1967 novel The Power of the Dog into a feature of the same name. It’s a Western of sorts about Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a self-consciously macho cowboy who hassles his more reserved brother George (Jesse Plemons) on the ranch they own and operate together. When George marries the widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), Phil turns his cruelty toward her, as well as her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), in spite of — or is it because of? — some unexpected common ground they share. Not So Old West: The Power of the Dog takes place in rural Montana in 1925, which amounts to a sort of netherworld between Old West imagery and the well-past-d...
A24’s Lamb is Slow-Burn Folk Horror Like Ewe Have Never Seen: Review
The Pitch: Out in the foggy hills of Iceland, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Gudnason), a couple spending a dignified, quiet existence on their sheep farm, reside far from the rest of civilization. It’s relatively unspoken, but one intuits early that they’re reeling from the recent loss of a child. It still stings, but the two press on in their virtually silent existence, going about their chores and assisting their ewes’ new births. One day, a member of the flock gives birth to a curious creature — an uncanny hybrid of man and lamb — that the pair immediately adopt as their own child. Her name? Ada. But as the three of them build a strangely comforting existence together, their fog-shrouded idyll is disrupted by forces outside their control. The arrival of Ingvar’s dead...
NYFF Review: Todd Haynes Turns Up the Volume for His Engaging Velvet Underground Doc
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Velvet Underground might have been the best American rock band of all time, and Todd Haynes has made a documentary about their relatively short but extremely influential career, which means covering not just core members Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, but collaborators and contemporaries like Nico, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. Started Shaking to That Fine, Fine Music: Todd Haynes obviously loves rock and roll, which makes it all the more impressive that he’s spent his career making movies about key figures in its history while avoiding the usual lionizing cliches. Starting with Superstar, his doll-acted Karen Carpenter biopic that’s not commercially available, and continuing wit...
NYFF Review: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is a Star-Packed Issue Worth Picking Up
The Pitch: Wes Anderson returns with his first live-action movie since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, crafting another group of stories within stories (and aspect ratios within aspect ratios). Here, he presents a 1975 issue of The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, a fictional New Yorker-ish magazine, featuring dramatizations of three major stories: a profile of an imprisoned artist (Benicio del Toro); a chronicle of youthful social revolution, led by Timothée Chalamet; and a combination crime story and food piece narrated by a jack-of-all-trades writer (Jeffrey Wright). That’s just a fraction of the sprawling cast, which includes Anderson mainstays like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Edward Norton alongside newbies like Chalamet, del Toro, Wright, and Léa S...
