Allied (2016)
DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis
CAST: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard
REVIEW:
Robert Zemeckis is no stranger to period films (Forrest Gump travels through decades of historical events), and now he’s turned his attention to crafting an old-fashioned wartime romance and potboiler of the like that Hollywood churned out in the 1940s. Unsurprisingly for someone of his much-lauded technical craftsmanship, Zemeckis has succeeded on a superficial level, but while engaging enough to be worth a look for a fan of this sort of thing, Allied, a bit like Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, focuses more on pretty pictures and capturing a certain style than on its pedestrian and undistinguished narrative. It’s not a bad film, but while it pays homage to them, it’s not likely to become an enduring classic. Continue reading
Arrival (2016)
DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve
CAST: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg
REVIEW:
Based on the short story “Story Of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, Arrival is the latest motion picture to dramatize an oft-theorized “first contact” scenario, and follows in the wake of Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian as the latest in Hollywood’s recent trend of “hard sci-fi” movies. Among these kinds of movies, it’s a cinematic cousin to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, and on the polar end of the spectrum from the likes of Independence Day. Those looking for an action flick should look elsewhere, lest they probably be bored senseless. Arrival is a linguistics lesson with bonus existential questions wrapped up in a slow burn, low-key docudrama that makes considerable demands of commitment and attention from a patient and intelligent audience looking for something to pick their brain rather than rev up their adrenaline. Unfortunately, while its aims are admirable in some ways, Arrival gets so wrapped up in its own dry, professorial theorizing that as a motion picture, it never quite “arrives”. Continue reading
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
DIRECTOR: David Yates
CAST: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY REVEAL “SPOILERS”
With any franchise as enormously popular and financially lucrative as Harry Potter, it’s not surprising that Warner Bros. would return to the watering hole sooner or later even if the story of Harry and companions told over seven books and eight movies was concluded (though that didn’t stop author J.K. Rowling from tacking on a follow-up, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and now, with Rowling cutting out the middle man and directly penning the screenplay herself, we have returned to the wizarding world, not in a continuation or direct tie-in with the Harry Potter series, but in a stand-alone installment (albeit intended to serve as the start of a new film series) set in the same “universe”. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, taking its unwieldy title and basic concept from one of Harry’s schoolbooks briefly-mentioned in the original series, is an enjoyable stand-alone adventure, but its status as a franchise-launching starting pad is more uncertain. Continue reading
Loving (2016)
DIRECTOR: Jeff Nichols
CAST: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Christopher Mann, Nick Kroll, Jon Bass, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas, Bill Camp
REVIEW:
Loving, writer-director Jeff Nichols’ low-key, stately chronicle of actual events spanning 1957-1967 that led to the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling overturning state laws against interracial relationships, serves a similar purpose to films covering the same time period and similar subject matter such as 2011’s The Help in serving as a history lesson to those too young to remember a time when racism was still officially written into law. Continue reading
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
DIRECTOR: Mel Gibson
CAST: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Luke Bracey
REVIEW:
The true story of Desmond Doss, the first Conscientious Objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving seventy-five men without firing a shot during the bloody Battle of Okinawa in WWII, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge (called the troubled actor-director’s “comeback project” in some circles) is a curious but overall effective blend of sappy cliches and graphic war violence, a film which initially threatens to come across like a generic “uplifting” story but—mostly when our pacifist protagonist finally goes to war around the halfway point—ultimately takes a turn to something far less sanitized but ultimately powerful and inspirational. Continue reading
Doctor Strange (2016)
DIRECTOR: Scott Derrickson
CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel McAdams
REVIEW:
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is now the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Doctor Strange fans are likely rejoicing as, after many years of waiting while other superhero franchises flourished, their hero has finally made his way to the big screen. For most Doctor Strange fans, the product will be worth the wait, even if it doesn’t scale its way to the top of the MCU. Doctor Strange is entertaining and visually dazzling, but saddled with the obligatory tropes and limitations of “the origin story”. Continue reading
The Accountant (2016)
DIRECTOR: Gavin O’Connor
CAST: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor, Jean Smart
REVIEW:
The Accountant is a curiously inert thriller mixed with a character study, or perhaps, as some have called it, a character study masquerading as a thriller. A perfunctory attempt at portraying the symptoms of a character with high-functioning autism/Asperger’s (the movie is slightly vague about his specific diagnosis) gives way to a generic shoot-em-up. An unneccessarily convoluted narrative structure—featuring flashbacks to several different time periods in the main character’s life, myriad superfluous subplots and extraneous supporting characters—serves only to muddy the waters and disguise the fact that, when all is said and done, there wasn’t that much to it. For a movie centering on a man of simplistic single-minded purpose, The Accountant seems desperate to convince us it’s more complex than it actually is. Continue reading
The Lost City of Z (2016)
DIRECTOR: James Gray
CAST: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland
REVIEW:
James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, an adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book of the same name, chronicles in docudrama fashion true events surrounding British explorer Percy Fawcett, who was sent to Bolivia and made several attempts at finding an ancient lost city in the Amazon and disappeared on an expedition in 1925 along with his son under mysterious circumstances. The film, which may have been as or more engaging as a straight documentary, is a sporadically compelling but muddled and uneven biopic that remains hindered by the need to condense a twenty-year span of events into a two and a half hour film. Continue reading
Inferno (2016)
DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
CAST: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Ana Ularu
REVIEW:
If nothing else, Inferno might hammer the final nail in the coffin of Sony’s increasingly inexplicable determination to make Robert Langdon—the protagonist of Dan Brown’s pulpy book series—into a “franchise” headliner. Dry, professorial Langdon isn’t exactly 007, and The Da Vinci Code was only a moderate box office success, while Angels & Demons didn’t do much business worth writing home about, but Sony insisted on forging ahead. With Inferno already opening weak, it might be time to stop adapting Dan Brown books. If you’re one of the seemingly relatively few people—including myself—who moderately enjoy these movies, Inferno offers up largely more of the same, but isn’t as good as the unevenly-paced but sporadically fascinating Da Vinci Code and doesn’t represent a compelling reason to rush to a theater near you. Continue reading
Denial (2016)
DIRECTOR: Mick Jackson
CAST: Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott
REVIEW:
Denial is a courtroom drama that relies less on ostentatious Oscar clip wannabe closing speeches and theatrics than meticulous cross-examination, and a true story that doesn’t embellish the material to up the ante. The result is a stately, dignified film that will bore those without an interest in the subject matter but may appeal to fans of courtroom dramas or for those with an interest in the true story. Continue reading