Film Reviews
Category“Tomorrowland”: Better living through delusion
For Disney to make a movie called Tomorrowland in 2015 begs the question of how the Walt Disney who built Disneyland’s optimistic vision o..
“Avengers: Age of Ultron”: More like DULLtron, amirite?
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, a movie that cost more than the GDP of Palau, the most impressive effect is James Spader’s voice. As the epony..
“Ex Machina”: You can never have enough sexy robots
Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is a virtual textbook of classic science fiction tropes. To describe it, you could start with its allusions to M..
“The Clouds of Sils Maria”: Another woman…and another, and another
When I realized that The Clouds of Sils Maria would be a long movie where characters walk through the Swiss Alps and talk about age, love,..
“While We’re Young”: And now we’re all 97 minutes older
On paper, Noah Baumbach’s new movie While We’re Young starts out as a wry comedy about the X/Millennial generation gap, then ultimately be..
“It Follows”: Horror at its most languid
I’m not sure exactly what it would look like if Sofia Coppola ever set out to make a horror film, but It Follows seems a fair approximatio..
Your contract with “Fifty Shades of Grey”
“Jupiter Ascending”: I can tell you two things wrong with that title
My mom recently sold the house where I grew up, and I finally had to clean out all my toys from the 80s. I remembered all the Transformers..
“Inherent Vice”: Chinatown in the Age of Aquarius
“That was the best stoner noir movie I’ve ever seen,” said a guy walking out of the Inherent Vice screening. Me too, I guess.
The 2009 ..
“D-Day” at Omnifest: Science Museum of Minnesota storms Normandy
D-Day: Normandy 1944 director Pascal Vuong had his work cut out for him. He had to convey the events and meaning of the Battle of Normandy..
“Into the Woods”: Disney undoes Disney (or tries to)
As I was walking out of a preview screening of Disney’s Into the Woods, a middle-aged woman behind me said to her companion, in confusion,..
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” brings Peter Jackson’s saga mercifully to a close
Normally when adapting a classic novel into a movie, it’s the literary source material that looms largest over the resulting adaptation. P..