It Comes at Night opens on the lesioned face of a dying old man surrounded by tearful loved ones wearing gloves and gas masks. He has a fatal and highly contagious disease that has decimated the population. He’s euthanized by the end of the next scene, not to put him out of his misery so
You don’t want to read too much into these things, but after DC Comics’ bleak creative stumbles in establishing a shared movie world — the so-so Man of Steel, the bad Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the awful Suicide Squad — it turns out all they really needed was a woman’s touch. Wonder Woman finally
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth chapter in the apparently immortal franchise, and like most of us, it pretends part four (On Stranger Tides) never happened. But that isn’t enough to pull the series out of its tailspin. Despite the impressive special effects and spectacular visuals, though, Dead Men
To watch the Alien prequels — Prometheus (2012) and now Alien: Covenant — is to marvel at the changes in astronaut-hiring practices that must have been implemented between the earlier chapters and the later ones. The characters in Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, set in 2124, are competent spacefarers who encounter difficult situations. But the people in Prometheus (set in
English dude-bro Guy Ritchie, having made his mark on the Sherlock Holmes mythos, turns his attention now to a famous Brit who probably actually existed. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which Ritchie co-wrote with Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram, applies the same kind of whirling, modern, masculine energy to Arthur and Excalibur that he
In this week’s episode of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, entitled Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the ragtag group of space-rogues led by self-described “Star-Lord” Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) meets a new friend: Peter’s father, played by Special Guest Star Kurt Russell! Peter never knew anything about his dad, only that he was not an
A certain breed of movie fan knows immediately why something called The Overlook Film Festival would be held at a place called the Timberline Lodge. The Timberline Lodge? In Oregon? Why, that’s the place that stood in for the fictional Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of The Shining! What better place to hold
Stipulated: The Armenian genocide, in which some 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman government (we call it Turkey now) between 1915 and 1922, is underrepresented in history books and in popular culture. Among 20th-century holocausts, it takes a backseat to the capital-H one in terms of size, scope, and worldwide societal impact. More
The most prominent theme in the Fast and the Furious movies isn’t family (they didn’t come up with that until a few sequels in) but conciliation. Enemies who aren’t killed often become friends in the next chapter, their former misdeeds evidently forgiven and forgotten. I suspect this is due more to narrative convenience than any overarching
What kind of lazy, lowest-common-denominator movie is Going in Style? The kind where the one F-word in the script is delivered gratuitously by an old lady who has no other lines, and it’s supposed to be hilarious because she’s an old lady. An old lady who says the F-word! Why, next thing you know she’ll
