“‘How to Build a Girl’ Betrays Its Blueprints”

How to build a girl? Start with a good script. Continue reading →

“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: Apostle, 2018, dir. Gareth Evans

Well, hey, look at that, a new Gareth Evans movie. I’ve been waiting on more Evans since 2014’s The Raid 2: Berandal, a high point in action filmmaking (if a little bit bloated, but the bloat is all good bloat); he has a way about the camera that ensures the camera is as involved in what … Continue reading →

Review: Far From the Madding Crowd, 2015, dir. Thomas Vinterberg

“Try not to judge Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd as a product of Dogme. For one thing, that Dutch-born filmmaking movement (which Vinterberg co-founded with career bad-boy Lars von Trier in 1995) disbanded 10 years ago. For another, Vinterberg and von Trier built Dogme around strict rules, and we … Continue reading →

Review: Tron Legacy, 2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski

There’s really no way around the blatant awfulness and stupidity of Tron Legacy. Apologists may fashion an array of defenses to shield it from criticism, which is fine and all except that this kind of picture is indefensible. From all angles, it’s a mess; it’s bloated but explains far too little, it’s an action spectacle … Continue reading →

Review: Midnight in Paris, 2011, dir. Woody Allen

A review for Midnight in Paris requires no preamble simply because it’s the best movie Woody Allen has made in years, which alone should be sufficient reason to watch it in light of the director’s limp and joyless recent output. But a review that begins with the suggestion that Midnight in Paris far exceeds the … Continue reading →