BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Dir. by Denis Villeneuve, 163 minutes, U.S., 2017) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Right off the bat, let’s say I’m relieved this didn’t turn out to be the wrong-headed, half-assed mess that was so easy to imagine. There’s a lot to digest but Blade Runner 2049 feels like a real film, not some sputtering, franchise-launching, million cook stew. Thirty-five years is an awful long time to wait before returning to a story, but director Denis Villeneuve has crafted a sequel that organically conjures the universe created by Ridley Scott although its ultimate destination takes us a little […]

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (Dir. by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, 121 min., 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC We have a tendency as humans to build up people and events with layers of symbolic meaning until they come to stand for something far greater than perhaps originally intended. Barack Obama seemed for a while like not another president, but the indicator of a post-racial age. Moonlight’s win over La La Land was touted by some as the redemption of the movie academy’s general bigotry. While these narratives are often fabricated to make money or shift public opinion, they […]

VICTORIA & ABDUL (Directed by Steven Frears, 152 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Because I am a son of Ireland, Queen Victoria was never my favorite historical figure. Her reign brought hard times for Ireland, as well as many other countries around the world. The Victorian era included the annexation of then-Zululand and India, the transportation of thousands to Australia, two horrible conflicts in Crimea and South Africa, the repression of sexual liberties, the scramble for Africa, and more. But how responsible was the Queen for the actions of her state? If she was even aware, can […]

WIND RIVER (Directed by Taylor Sheridan, USA, 2017, 107 minutes) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC In the more militaristic branches of American culture, there is a belief that society can be broken down into three categories of people: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. The sheep are ordinary people who go about their lives with no understanding for the world’s dangers. The wolves are anyone who preys on the weak and takes whatever they want. The only line of defense between the sheep and the wolves are the sheepdogs, protectors of the flock who tirelessly hunt down bad guys and never ask […]

LOGAN LUCKY (Directed by Steven Soderberg, USA, 118 minutes) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Everyone loves a good heist movie. Whether the planning is minutely perfect or rather haphazard, we dole out mass amounts of money to see them go down on screen. Taking other people’s money is an American pastime, and heroes from Robin Hood to Danny Ocean have provided smash hits for box-offices almost everywhere. Sometimes we love our righteous liberators of wealth, but sometimes we just like to see a clever hero tweak the nose of someone richer. Logan Lucky brings a hilarious, fresh take to take […]

It (2017, directed by Andrew Muschietti, 135 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC This week the movie industry bemoaned there limpest summer ever, hopefully giving some studio honchos a moment to rethink the trend of larding up what was once a season of innovation and fresh ideas with a seemingly endless string of sequels, remakes, franchises and corny old super heroes. The fall trend of Oscar-worthy releases might relieve us a bit yet one of the most-hyped films of the early fall season is another Hollywood no-brainer: an adaptation of horror icon Stephen King’s 1986 novel, It, previously brought […]

THE TRIP TO SPAIN (Directed by Michael Winterbottom, 108 minutes, UK 2017) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC There are lots of movies about journeys and adventures, from The Great Race to Eurotrip, but not many of them capture the banalities of a road-trip quite as well as The Trip series. Originally a series on the BBC, the trilogy — The Trip, The Trip to Italy and now The Trip To Spain — have all been made into feature length movies and released abroad. Each presents a similar story of two friendly rivals, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing heightened versions […]

  NEW YORK MAGAZINE: He grew up in showbiz, much of it Catskills-based, traveling with his mom and dad through the Borscht Belt. His future could be discerned in some of his first, juvenile routines: pantomiming to grand opera and other emotional recordings, his rubber face exaggerating every vocal quaver, enacting a counter narrative that was completely disruptive — yet indebted to the high art of his predecessors. This is a recognizable mode of being for a Jewish comedian, who’ll find a quick route to an audience’s heart as a clown, but secretly wants to be part of the world […]

Illustration by DREW FRIEDMAN SPY MAGAZINE: To artists and intellectuals, the twentieth century has posed no questions more vexing than these: First, can art make sense of the Holocaust? And second, why do the French love Jerry Lewis? The first question can’t really be answered, at least not in the space allotted here. As for the second, it’s my own opinion that the French have confused sloppy, uneven filmmaking with Godardian anti-formalism. Regardless, raising these two issues on the same page is not just a pointless exercise in non-sequitur. Because Jerry Lewis, like Elli Wiesel and Primo Levi before him […]

THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD (dir. by Patrick Hughes, 118 minutes, USA, 2017) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Following in the tradition of buddy-cop action comedies like 48 Hours or 16 Blocks, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is the story of a material witness who must be transported to the courthouse overcoming multiple obstacles and people trying to kill him before he gets there. Where this movie differs from those archetypal comedies is in its international scale, because, instead of a drug dealer or corrupt cop, the authority figure on trial is Gary Oldman’s Vladislav Dukhovich (a substitute for real life President of Belarus […]

THE DARK TOWER (directed by Nikolaj Arcel, 95 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC When your plot is essentially invincible cowboy knights waging eternal war on Nyarlathotep in order to save the universe, you rely heavily on conventions to forge a narrative. But the point is to build strong characters with emotional depth to drive the conventions home and create meaningful drama. The Dark Tower smothers its most interesting ideas with cliches, and gives no reason for the audience to care about the characters’ struggles. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are both fine, but not special. It doesn’t […]

  JOHN POWERS, FRESH AIR CRITIC-AT-LARGE: A lot of comedians are funny. But only a handful have the genius to shape the comic terrain. One of them is Albert Brooks, who, in a cosmic bad joke, is probably best known to today’s audiences as the voice of Marlin in “Finding Nemo.” But back in the early ’70s, in a famous Esquire article and a series of legendary “Tonight Show” performances, Brooks set about gleefully exploding the schticks and traditions of standup comedy. Making comedy about comedy, he blazed the trail for such later masters of showbiz meta as Steve Martin, […]