Futuristic cyber-thriller Ghost in the Shell is loaded with advanced technology, but it’s in the service of a disappointingly basic plot with few surprises. Add to that the bafflingly tone-deaf treatment of racial and cultural issues and you’ve really got a “Why’d they bother with this?” situation on your hands. In a heavily CGI’d future Japan
Trainspotting, a cult favorite since the moment it arrived 21 years ago, was Danny Boyle’s second movie and most of the world’s first exposure to Ewan McGregor. Boyle has directed nine more films since then, and McGregor has exposed himself countless times, but fans keep jonesin’ for another hit of that sweet, sweet ‘spotting. The
The only way Disney’s live-action remake of its own Beauty and the Beast works is if you don’t compare it to the 1991 animated masterpiece. This is hard to do, though, because 1) you have seen the 1991 animated masterpiece, possibly many times, and 2) the remake keeps chasing it, going so far as to duplicate
Kong: Skull Island is about people barging into a place they’ve never been before, dropping bombs to see how solid the land is, then acting indignant when the local wildlife responds defensively. It’s about humans punishing nature for being nature, and about bureaucrats embarking on research expeditions motivated by revenge. Fine, fine. It’s also about
Logan is the third standalone film for Hugh Jackman’s knife-fisted X-Men maverick Wolverine, completing the weary trilogy with something fans have long waited to see: Wolverine’s adamantium claws slashing through human skulls like they were piñatas. Yes, we’re in hard-R territory here, with Mr. Logan (and others) doing fatal, bloody damage to numerous people, swearing
There is a certain movie formula where an ordinary man must do something illegal and dangerous (usually to save a loved one), but the task goes awry and he spends the next 24 hours running from bad guys (usually drug traffickers), becoming increasingly battered from all the auto wrecks and leaps from rooftops before finally
A movie about an African-American boyfriend visiting his white girlfriend’s family home sounds like a hackneyed drama about race relations in America. But Get Out is no Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? The movie twists the cliched setup into a sharp horror-comedy … that is also an allegory about race relations in America. You know
Gore Verbinski has directed three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and The Lone Ranger, plus The Ring, Rango, and Mousehunt, as well as under-seen gems The Mexican and The Weather Man. With such a varied resume that includes remakes and adaptations, it’s hard to pin down Verbinski’s own aesthetics. What is HE interested in? I’ve always
Is a bad comedy truly a bad comedy when you find yourself laughing a lot? I don’t mean pleasure from a movie’s awfulness, but laughing at crude jokes written for (and maybe by) 13-year-olds. Before you know it, there you are laughing at a baby in a cloud of cocaine, or two dumb guys watching
In a way, it’s a little ironic: While DC/Warner Bros. struggles to deliver a successful Batman film to a public that’s still (for the time being, anyway) hungry for superhero flicks, in slips The LEGO Batman Movie with an outwardly silly riff on the Bruce Wayne mythos that explores the brooding hero’s psyche with more
