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