‘Tangerine’ Review: Transgender Comedy Takes Chances, and Not Just by Filming...
Gridlocked and indifferently sprawling, Los Angeles is less known for motion than the sitting and waiting the city imposes on its residents. But high-heeled Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) — short for...
View Article‘Lila and Eve’ Review: Viola Davis and Jennifer Lopez Tackle Loss in Powerful...
A lovingly crafted B-level melodrama elevated by its remarkable central performance, “Lila and Eve” feels like Viola Davis‘ “Still Alice.” In a just world, this deeply compassionate and politically...
View Article‘Irrational Man’ Review: Woody Allen’s Moral Fable is Confused – Even For a...
As with so many of his films, Woody Allen‘s latest features a protagonist, this time played by Joaquin Phoenix, seemingly modeled on the filmmaker himself: an older, misanthropic member of the...
View Article‘Pixels’ Review: Adam Sandler Schlumps Through Bland Action-Fantasy
Imagine if eating Doritos, making fart sounds with your hands, rolling your eyes at your mom or something else you’d effortlessly mastered as a snotty seventh grader was the key to saving the world....
View Article‘Unexpected’ Review: Cobie Smulders Mopes Through Thoughtful, Sleepy...
Pregnancy and motherhood may be experiences most women share, but you probably don’t need a fractious mommy blog to tell you that these states of being also emphasize differences of race, class,...
View Article‘Best of Enemies’ Review: Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley Usher in Era of...
1968 was an apocalyptic year for both the right and the left. Women, blacks, students, hippies, homosexuals and anyone else shut out of the post-WWII power structure revolted en masse — and were met by...
View Article‘Shaun the Sheep’ Review: ‘Wallace & Gromit’ Spin-Off Is Pure, Wordless...
Twenty years after his debut in a “Wallace and Gromit” short, Shaun the Sheep — a crudely drafted claymation creature with googly eyes and some woolly fuzz — gets his own delightful star vehicle. If...
View Article‘Fort Tilden’ Review: SXSW Favorite Invites You to Care About the Most...
The first hour or so of the Williamsburg comedy “Fort Tilden” is an endurance test. Watching aimless hipsters Harper (Bridey Elliott) and Allie (Clare McNulty) snipe at each other and everyone around...
View Article‘Hitman: Agent 47’ Review: Video Game Adaptation is All (Messy) Plot, No...
Violence is the point of “Hitman: Agent 47,” but there isn’t enough of it to sustain this second film based on the “Hitman” video game series. Technically a reboot, “Agent 47” is a redo at establishing...
View Article‘Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine’ Review: Stunning Peek at Apple Legend’s...
Steve Jobs gave the world a whole new kind of love. By demanding aesthetic beauty, technical excellence and a connection with the user from each Apple product, he became a legend by single-handedly...
View Article‘Breathe’ Review: Melanie Laurent’s Tale of Friendship Gone Wrong Is One of...
She’s a familiar figure: the gorgeous teenage girl or young woman whose seduction, especially as a new best friend, is as intense as it is irresistible. Past the funky jewelry and the studied...
View Article‘The New Girlfriend’ Review: Tame Trans Drama Is Too Beautiful to Dismiss
The bravura montage that opens the transgender melodrama “The New Girlfriend” perfectly encapsulates the film’s obsessions with death, sex, and femininity. A pre-Raphaelite blonde is adorned in her...
View Article‘The Green Inferno’ Review: Eli Roth’s Cannibal Horror Flick Is Racially...
It’s hard to think of a genre that fetishizes white (virginal) femininity more than horror. Two of the most frequent tropes in slasher flicks, for example, are specifically tied to gender and race: the...
View Article‘He Named Me Malala’ Review: Flat Portrait of Nobel Winner Belongs in...
In the era of documentary over-saturation, we need to update Andy Warhol’s saying about those inevitable 15 minutes of fame: In the near future, everyone will have a nonfiction film made about them,...
View Article‘Goosebumps’ Review: Jack Black Horror Spoof Is Nostalgia Done Right
Children’s horror author R.L. Stine has sold 400 million books — a fact dutifully recounted in “Goosebumps,” the new comedy-adventure named after Stine’s 200-odd novella franchise. A few of the...
View Article‘Victoria’ Review: Single-Take Drama Makes for a Night to Remember
Nobody makes smart decisions at 4 a.m., especially not after a night of shots and sweaty dancing. That partly explains why Victoria (Laia Costa), a college-age Spanish tourist on an extended visit to...
View Article‘Love & Mercy’ Review: Paul Dano and John Cusack Play Brian Wilson in...
The moral universe of “Love & Mercy,” the new biopic about Beach Boys virtuoso Brian Wilson (played by Paul Dano as a young man, and then by John Cusack), is as stark as the bright, metallic ring...
View Article‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’ Review: Sundance-Winning Teen Cancer Drama...
What’s a fair price for an epiphany? The Sundance favorite “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” sabotages itself by answering this question whoppingly, offensively wrong. A dirtier, quirkier take on the...
View Article‘The Overnight’ Review: Adam Scott Tries to Get His Groove on in Tame Comedy
“The Overnight” is the movie equivalent of fuzzy handcuffs: a tame and unimaginative attempt at spicing up the overly familiar scenario of a married couple trying to get their groove back....
View Article‘Max’ Review: Old-Fashioned Tale of a Heroic Mutt Gets Surprisingly Dark
World War I survivor, silent-movie icon, and enthusiastic face-licker Rin Tin Tin was so popular a star that he very nearly won the inaugural Best Actor Oscar in 1929. In these “everything old is new...
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