Masked men break into a house and beat up Keanu Reeves. Unusually, this time Keanu is sporting a beard in his guise as John Wick, a lethal ex-mobster that is now on a revenge rampage to kill the people who hurt him and his puppy. The good news? I haven’t spoiled anything: it’s all in the trailer. The bad news? There’s nothing else to spoil. Continue reading When You’re In The John And The Wick Burns Out →

There’s an inherent fairy-tale quality to animated films. They build worlds that are similar to our own, but a step removed. Physical traits appear exaggerated, colors shine with distinctive brightness, and characters challenge and stretch bounds of reality. Perhaps this is why the medium is so often used to tell children’s stories: animated movies create a unique world where anything is possible. Continue reading Big Hero 6: A Child-Sized Step Forward →

There is no shortage of memorable images in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. From a dust storm in the ecologically devastated future United States to distant planets circling a black hole, the cinematography is expertly rendered and often magnificent. The frequent use of practical effects gives an effective patina of stark realism to the sci-fi scenery. Yet it’s one of the humbler shots from the beginning of the movie that really captures its wasted potential. Continue reading Interstellar: In Space, No One Can Hear You Yawn →

Birdman is an artistic, intellectual film that does no artistic or intellectual work. It’s an outline, a sketch, a suggestion of an idea, and that idea isn’t even original. Continue reading Birdman Falls Flat →

Although Philip Roth is often cited as America’s greatest living writer, so far no filmmaker has had any real success in transferring his richly observed world of Judaic literary machismo onto film. Continue reading Listen up Philip: Lives Imitating Art →

It is very tempting to begin this review with a food pun: to speak about how tastefully done or how flavorful the film is. But while certain elements of the film were certainly tasteful, the film as a whole was just bland. And despite its name, Chef is less about the experience of being a chef and more about two very broad groundbreaking themes: “Be the person who you want to be” and “Family is always important.”

Continue reading Chef: A Dish Served from the Heart but Without Much Art →

I must confess up front that I seldom get much enjoyment out of horror movies. I decided to watch Ouija on a whim and my opinion hasn’t changed.  Teenagers find and play with a Ouija board, evil spirits get involved, hapless teens suffer the consequences—riveting, huh? Continue reading Ouija Bored →

You have watched all these scenes before, but they have never been so funny. David Wain’s They Came Together is a parody of the romantic comedy genre, a distillation of every hackneyed trope into eighty minutes of absurdity.

Continue reading They Came Together: An Ode to the Rom Com →

If you liked the premise of Lord of the Flies but thought it was too disheartening and complex, perhaps The Maze Runner will be more palatable. Based on the first book of James Dashner’s science fiction trilogy of the same title, The Maze Runner opens with protagonist Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) in utter confusion, having had his memory wiped clean. He wakes up in a settlement called “the Glade,” where he finds that everyone is male and has had the exact same experience, namely suffering from severe amnesia and unable to provide any context to what’s happening. Unfortunately, we share in the exact same experience for the rest of the film, trapped within walls of confusion and asking ourselves “why am I here?”

Continue reading Running in Circles—Oh Wait, It’s a Maze →

Violence is difficult to treat honestly. Many directors are guilty of either shying away from gory scenes entirely or using them to make the audience uneasy. Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, new on Netflix, takes a different tact by insisting that violence does not come out of a vacuum but from human emotions.

As the movie begins Dwight (Macon Blair) discovers that the man who killed his parents has been released from prison. Dwight is a broken man, devastated by the murders, and like a cornered animal he feels he has no option but to lash out.  Inexperienced in the act of killing and delirious with adrenaline, Dwight runs scared from the bloody scene he has created, and scrambles to escape in his victim’s car.

Continue reading Blue Ruin: Revenge and Regret    →

An enthusiastic young man beams at his potential employer. “What I believe, sir,” he nods, “is that good things come to those who work their asses off.” His pitch is self-assured and friendly. A watch, expensive and stylish, jingles on his wrist as he physically punctuates his points with zeal. The watch belongs to the man he beat to death less than an hour ago.

Continue reading Déjà Vu All Over Again: Nightcrawler is Fun but Done →

If you overheard a conversation in my family, you might think that we hate each other. Teasing, mockery, and insults abound when we reunite. We rehash embarrassing old stories, deriving pleasure from one another’s mistakes. But we don’t hate each other, I swear—we’re drawn together by this shared sense of humor. It defines us not individually, but together. Comedy makes my family mine, and that sense of humor I bring with me everywhere always ties me back to the home I grew up in. Unlike many comedies, whose only purpose seems to be making the audience laugh, The Skeleton Twins taps into the complex, human side of comedy. Continue reading The Skeleton Twins: A Comedy of Purpose →