This is the rare “Love it or hate it” debate where I absolutely love what’s being debated. Congratulations go to Jennifer Lawrence for starring in one of the boldest, most alienating films an A-list actress at the peak of her career ever has starred in. And director Darren Aronofsky has outdone his big-budget “Noah” for…
Category: Mindless Mondays
NEW Movies: “Kingsman 2” and “The Snowman”
Two junk thrillers that are still in theaters, but not quite good enough to get their own reviews… Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle…Although the film is financially successul (sort-of), I can’t imagine people are really that thrilled when they walk out of the theater. This is a disappointment to the original “Kingsman” film in almost every way…
Reviews: Documentaries on Spielberg, Joan Didion, “Tickling Giants,” and Lady Gaga
There’s something inherently fascinating about documentaries about artists, and what a collection we have to choose from with new docs on the world’s most famous living film director, a legendary 60’s writer, a mega-successful pop star, and an Egyptian political satirist trying his best to poke fun at encroaching fascism… Spielberg…If you go outside Hollywood…
Reviews: “Chuck,” “Wakefield,” “Beatriz at Dinner,” “Megan Leavey,” “Before I Fall”
If that last quintet of big-budget turkeys left a bad taste in your mouth, check out these four prestige dramas named after their main characters, and a young adult fantasy lumped in mostly because I didn’t have another place to put it… Chuck…I count myself as a fan of the “Rocky” franchise like pretty much…
Reviews: 50 Shades Darker, The Shack, XXX: Return of Xander Cage, The House, Rough Night
After positively reviewing some terrific documentaries, here’s a fresh batch of new-to-DVD turkeys in case you worried I was going soft, including a Christian propaganda film and a Chinese propaganda Vin Diesel actioner… xXx: Return of Xander Cage…It’s not every day you get to see a (seemingly) braindead, generically unappealing action turd that’s actually a very…
Documentary Reviews: Obit, Born in China, Banking on Bitcoin, Josh: Teenager Vs. Superpower, Marsha P. Johnson
Five wildly different 2017 documentaries that are mostly winners, but it’s also kind-of hard to make a bad documentary. 4 times out of 5 you’ll learn something new, and the hardest part may be getting people to watch… Obit…A documentary about the New York Times that even conservatives can enjoy, this doc follows the obituary…
Reviews: “Beguiled,” “The Dinner,” “It Comes At Night,” “Aftermath,” “Mean Dreams”
A quintet of dark, mostly joyless dramas that are different degrees of downers, but there’s only a couple I’d recommend if you were on an airplane and had seen most everything else… The Beguiled…I’ve liked every movie Sofia Coppola has made…until now. After watching this surprisingly bad remake, I sought out the original: Clint Eastwood’s…
Reviewing the end of “Episodes” and Ranking the Seasons
It’s extremely difficult to rank the five seasons of Showtime’s recently departed “Episodes” partly because the seasons are fairly consistent in quality (you might argue that not enough changes over the course of the five seasons spread out over seven years) and also because I suspect I might be the only person who even watched…
Netflix Movies: Our Souls at Night, Gerald’s Game, First They Killed My Father
Three very different Netflix Original offerings finds Redford and Fonda back at their peak, Gugino and Greenwood at a low point, and Angelina Jolie directing another film where the main characters are brutalized for two hours-plus… First They Killed My Father…I’ve mentioned several times that Jolie is a pain-freak in her directorial efforts, piling on…
Movie Reviews: Everything Everything, Free Fire, Colossal, My Cousin Rachel, Boss Baby
I can’t really even pretend these films have anything in common except that I watched them. That’s about it, but this is a strong group over all… Everything Everything…This unfairly dismissed teen romance (mediocre reviews and box office) follows Amandla Stenberg’s immune-disease afflicated teen (the movie calls it something, but you may know it as…
Movie Reviews: The Lovers, War On Everyone, A Dark Song, Song to Song, Once Upon a Time in Venice
Love, war, and two very different movies with “song” in the title… The Lovers…This “best of the bunch” film involves a long-married couple (Debra Winger, in a comeback role, and Homeland’s Tracy Letts, more known for being a great playwright) who are also having long-running affairs (with Magnolia’s Melora Waters and Aidan Gillen, cornering the…
Movie Round-Up: The Lost City of Z, Snatched, Gifted, The Bad Batch
Today rounds up a series of films where Anglos are in peril in hostile, lawless lands, including the state of Florida in the case of “Gifted”… The Bad Batch…In yet another Dystopian vision of America (sigh), former model Suki Waterhouse—whose best performance so far was pretending to love Bradley Cooper for two years while she…
TV Review: “Episodes” and “The Good Place”
Episodes…Halfway through its fifth and final season, “Episodes” is playing to its already established strengths (a showbiz-satire that’s actually accurate, sharp dialogue, and Matt LeBlanc’s excellent skewering of himself, he’s clearly enjoying the best role he’ll likely ever get) more than risking it all on too many bold new directions, but that’s probably for the…