RED SPARROW (Dir. by Francis Lawrence, 139 minutes, USA, 2018) BY EVAN HUNDELT Director Francis Lawrence’s seventh feature film Red Sparrow, starring his actorial muse Jennifer Lawrence, may, to the exacting cinephile, suffer from unbidden comparisons to his work with her on the culturally ubiquitous The Hunger Games quadrilogy. Whether or not Francis Lawrence consciously designed Dominika Egorova (the conscripted Russian special operative known as a “Sparrow,” stunningly portrayed by J.L.) with this nagging prospect in mind, what is certain, as emphasized bewilderingly in the film’s opening scenes (in which a cane-turned-warhammer figures prominently), is that Jennifer Lawrence has undoubtedly […]
CINEMA: Cat Scratch Fever
BLACK PANTHER (Directed by Ryan Coogler, 134 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Black Panther catches up Chadwick Boseman’s Prince T’Challa — hands down the best part of Captain America: Civil War (2016) — upon his return to the fictional African nation of Wakanda in the wake of his father’s death. A quick prologue fills in the nation’s backstory: centuries ago a giant vibranium meteor crashed into Wakanda, helping the nation to flourish and advance at an amazing rate. Fearing this technological renaissance will invite marauding armies, the five governing tribes to seal off their small nation from […]
GEEK SQUAD: Black And Proud
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Black Panther (2018) is the best superhero movie I have ever seen. Not just the best this year, not just the best since Captain America: Winter Soldier (2013) or Tim Bruton’s Batman (1989) not just the best with a person of color superhero. Just The Best. Period. The film was already hyped due to Disney’s Deaths Star size PR department but it is actually quality. Director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Fruitvale Station) brings the Marvel country of Wakanda to life. And he slams it right into the rest of the world. Wakanda is the most […]
CINEMA: The Bare, Ruined Choirs Of John Mahoney
AV CLUB: There’s a similarly loose resemblance between Mahoney’s character, a floridly boozy Southern author named W.P. Mayhew, and William Faulkner. Ethan Coen has acknowledged that discovering Faulkner had once worked on a wrestling picture starring Wallace Beery (Whaddaya need, a road map?) gave the brothers their way in on Barton Fink—the concept of an eminently serious author debasing themselves in order to, as Mayhew puts it to Barton, “make their way out here to the Great Salt Lick.” Like Faulkner, Mayhew is also a heavy drinker—Barton first discovers him puking in the bathroom—and he speaks in a casually baroque […]
CINEMA: The Dresser
THE PHANTOM THREAD (dir. by Paul Thomas Anderson, 130 min., USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC After more or less going dark for three years, Paul Thomas Anderson returns to the silver screen with Phantom Thread, his follow up to 2014’s Inherent Vice, which reunites him with Daniel Day-Lewis for what reportedly will be the famously enigmatic actor’s final film role. Much like The Master, Phantom Thread is an evocative exploration of the ever-shifting power dynamics of dysfunctional relationships in Post-War period dress. But in stark contrast to sprawling American epics like There Will Be Blood and The Master, […]
CINEMA: Paper Trail
THE POST (Directed by Steven Spielberg, 115 minutes, USA, 2017) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Is Nixon done to death? With two movies out in the past six months alone, I have to wonder how much more we can squeeze out of the years between 1968 to 1974. It’s gotten to the point where they’re making prequels to classics like All the President’s Men; it won’t be long until they do a remake of it. Anyway, this year’s recycling of the journalistic wet dream that was the Nixon saga is The Post, which retells for film the real events of […]
THE KING OF COMEDY: Q&A With Judd Apatow
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week we will be re-posting choice Q&As from the past year. Today we present this reprise edition of this in-depth interview with Judd Apatow, which originally posted on February 17th, 2017. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA By this point, everyone knows who Judd Apatow is, or at least everyone who’s had even a glancing interface with a cineplex marquee or has a non-delinquent cable account and a functioning funny bone. With writing, producing, directing or acting credits in nearly 40 films and 24 television shows, Mr. Apatow has become the Starbucks of comedy — dark-roasted, fairly-traded, consistently reliable, […]
CINEMA: Violent Femme
I, TONYA (Directed by Craig Gillespie, 119 minutes, USA, 2017) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Much buzzed-about this Oscar season, I, Tonya is an unlikely prestige film about an unlikely Olympian starring Margot Robbie as the notorious Tonya Harding, the disgraced figure skater who conspired to have her rival maimed by her bodyguard right before the 1994 Olympics. This black comedy is constructed like a mockumentary, in the vein of The Big Short, where on-camera interviews with actors in character (“based on irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” with the actual people portrayed in the film) are supplemented by reenactments […]
Win Tix To See An Advanced Screening Of I, Tonya
The 2017 Oscar season continues with I, Tonya, an unlikely prestige film about a felonious but not entirely unsympathetic Olympian’s fall from grace, or something close to it, starring Margot Robbie as the notorious Tonya Harding and directed by Craig Gillespie. This much-buzzed-about black comedy is constructed like a mockumentary, in the style of The Big Short, where on camera interviews with actors in character — based on “irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” with the people portrayed in the film — are supplemented by reenactments with those same actors often breaking the fourth wall. Check out the […]
CINEMA: It Crawled From The Swamp
THE SHAPE OF WATER (Dir. by Guillermo del Toro, 123 min., 2017, USA) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Easily the strangest film this prestige season is Guillermo del Toro’s eccentric romantic masterpiece The Shape of Water. The film opens today at the Ritz Five and is a rather unique take on a love story that is an unlikely mash-up the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amélie) and the Universal Monsters. Shape has del Toro returning to his roots to give us a darkly fantastic fairy tale that has the director at his best and most unrestrained […]
CINEMA: The New Star Wars Is Really Great
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Directed by Rian Johnson, 152 minutes, 2017, USA) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC With Thursday’s release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson picks up the reigns of the space opera mega-franchise left by J.J. Abrams. Given the bleakness of Looper and cleverness of Brick, I was more than a bit curious to see what Johnson would do in the Disney® sandbox. Surprisingly enough not only did Johnson make it through making the film without being fired — no small achievement, that — but he turned in a film that feels very much […]
CINEMA: The New Star Wars Is Not Great
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Directed by Rian Johnson, 152 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC What do we like about Star Wars? We love the science fiction saga about the struggle between impoverished good guys and ultimate evil. A visually enthralling spectacle of sound and fury with one of the best scores in cinematic history. A timeless tale set in a fascinating other galaxy that mimics the politics and struggles of our own world. We love being assured that even at its most hopeless, good can triumph over evil. It’s that little-kid response, the joy of seeing […]