“Able to Do Anything Post-MCU, Robert Downey Jr. Chooses ‘Dolittle'”

What’s a man do to when he has all the money in the world plus a rehabilitated image as Marvel’s greatest hero? He does little. Very, very little. Continue reading →

Review: Mary and the Witch’s Flower, 2018, dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi

I’m sort of a career goof, and so I have a natural inclination toward characters who are also career goofs. Meaning, there’s more than one reason why I compare Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower to Harry Potter. There’s the obvious reason – they’re both about schools for young witches! – and there’s the secondary reason, which … Continue reading →

Game of Theories: Why We’re So Fixated on “Figuring Out” Game of Thrones

  By now, y’all have probably forgotten that I watch Game of Thrones. This is because I don’t write much about Game of Thrones, except for when I feel the impulse to swoop in and pour disdain on Internet hysteria over needless, manipulative plot contrivances. But I’m back, writing about Game of Thrones once more, this time for the … Continue reading →

Review: The Sense of an Ending, 2017, dir. Ritesh Batra

Remember that time I reviewed Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years? I sure haven’t forgotten it. In part that’s because I just got my copy of The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release of the film in the mail; in larger part it’s because I recently saw The Sense of an Ending, the new film from The Lunchbox director Ritesh Batra, and … Continue reading →

Review: Broolyn, 2015, dir. John Crowley

“America is having a renewed—but frankly disappointing—dialogue on the subject of immigration in 2015. Our great country doesn’t exactly have a pristine record when it comes to welcoming émigrés, of course, and so the undercurrent of angry paranoia voiced in that dialogue is neither new, nor especially surprising. It is, however, counterintuitive: The U.S. is … Continue reading →

Review: Big Game, 2015, dir. Jalmari Helander

“Big Game’s stelliform cast isn’t the only proof Finnish director Jalmari Helander has gone Hollywood. The scene that best evinces his Tinseltown transition plays out in the film’s first few minutes, in which one of the supporting players from Helander’s international breakout movie, the wonderful Yuletide-horror gem Rare Exports, gets mercilessly exploded in a wanton … Continue reading →

Go, See, Talk! Review: Cloud Atlas, 2012, dir. Andy and Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer

The Wachowski siblings are back four years after their last directorial effort, this time with Tom Tykwer in tow, and their adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is a magnificent opus of optimism and hope. Continue reading →

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt. 2, 2011, dir. David Yates

Unsurprisingly, the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is one massive climax from start to finish. What else did anyone expect? Part one heroically bit the bullet and allowed itself to bear the weight of the novel’s filler, martyr-like, so that part two could act like an unrelenting, two-hour-and-change action scene in … Continue reading →