But is that really a bad thing? The “Daniels” — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — are filmmakers who are keenly concerned with mores of male intimacy, and how they collide in a masculine culture where “no homo” is the…
Hobbs & Shaw Review: Fast and Furious Without Cruise Control
Hardly a third into the runtime of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, it’s tempting to wish for the action spy comedy to drop all remaining pretenses, mainly its affiliating nod to the Fast & Furious franchise in its…
The Lion King Movie Review: Disney laughs in the face of remake fatigue
In many ways, Disney has long applied the “circle of life” philosophy to its classic animated movies, now routinely reborn and recycled into “live-action re-imaginings.” But it’s only recently that the studio has drawn from the well of its 90s-era…
Yesterday Movie Review: Love it or hate it, your troubles will seem so far away
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Lily James asks a down-on-his-songwriting-luck Himesh Patel as he stocks shelves in a part-time warehouse job. The film immediately cuts to a new location to see this question through, but…
Ma Movie Review: Octavia Spencer gives her all in a horror film that couldn’t care less about her
As if high school wasn’t scary enough, Ma is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse and Universal attempting to inject new terrors into the coming-of-age experience, this time by front-lining Octavia Spencer (an Academy Award-winning actress) at her wackiest octave, a sublime blend of unhinged, unbent, and thoroughly broken.
‘High Life’ Review – Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche search for meaning in the depths of space
The opening moments of High Life are jarring in their dissimilarity. Here we are on a hollow, almost completely abandoned ship out in deep space with a set design echoing the third act of Alien, and renowned French filmmaker Claire Denis chooses to first expose you to an organic garden aboard the craft, dripping with life and potential sustenance. From there, we hear a baby’s coos ringing through the empty hallways, and only a distant voice over the radio — belonging to Monte in a lead role by Robert Pattinson — can hear the infant’s wails as he’s outside in a spacesuit repairing the hull, only one fatal mistake away from falling into oblivion and dooming not just his own life, but his daughter’s.
Breakthrough Movie Review: Weird Christianity, Weirder Timing
Who needs miracles, anyway? After all, Breakthrough is coming out at a time when just about everyone not only feels like they could use a miracle right about now, but almost all of them have the means through social media to broadcast their deserved woes. Here is a film framed and wired with Judeo-Christian principles as a trojan horse of supposedly enlightened messaging keen on both evangelizing the uninitiated and soothing the believers into further submission. This is Breakthrough, a film bent on preaching to the choir with emotional hand-wringing. It’s just a shame the sermon has only the trappings of substance or spiritual investigation.
