In the middle of a summer of dumb fun and comic-book escapism, it’s some kind of miracle to find a film as seriously ambitious, scrappy and suspenseful as Luce. A provocation about race, privilege and the expectations that come with both, the movie follows the title character, played by star-in-the-making …
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Everything money can buy — including the vocal talents of Beyoncé and Donald Glover and the latest in digital pizazz — has been poured into Jon Favreau’s photo-realistic retake on The Lion King, the 1994 Disney animated classic. What’s missing? Let’s start with intangibles such as heart, soul and the …
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Lynn Shelton makes magnificently messy movies. A low-key fixture on the indie scene that gave us the Duplass brothers and various other prolific ragged-glory filmmakers, she’s a writer-director who specializes in skewed character studies; her best work — notably 2011’s Your Sister’s Sister — sands down the idiosyncrasies just enough …
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“I thought it would take me a lifetime to understand the human heart,” says Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi), a montage of New York City playing underneath her voiceover. “All it took was a single day.” Given the placement of that line of dialogue, this means it takes roughly three minutes …
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There’s a moment near the beginning of Bodied, Joseph Kahn’s brittle battering ram of a battle-rap comedy, where a character explains the difference between using lines and bars. You get off a handful of good lines when you’re facing an opponent in a freestyle battle, just two people in a …
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How do you rate a cinematic black hole that doesn’t deserve a single star? Do you simply give it five eyerolls? Better question: How does a movie, with all the talent in the world going for it, become a such a blithering botch job? That’s Life Itself, which counts Oscar …
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Dwayne Johnson saves. It’s sort of his signature thing, really. An informal list of people, places and other miscellany that the man still known by many as “The Rock” has protected, defended and/or rescued: a young Polynesian woman, part of the Egyptian empire, ancient Greece, San Francisco, fellow video-game avatars, …
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There aren’t many documentaries that see Elvis Presley as the bruised soul of America through fun times and bum times. In fact, there’s only one. Formerly called Promised Land, the doc – a spellbinder – is now known as The King,and filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (The House I Live In, Why …
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Just in time for Mother’s Day comes Tully, starring a firing-on-all-cylinders Charlize Theron as Marlo, a wife and mom of three, including a newborn. She’s about to come apart at the seams, and you’re about to say that you’ve seen this before. Think again. Director Jason Reitman is guided at …
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There’s a scene in Rampage, the latest movie adaptation of an old-ass – sorry, “vintage” – video game, in which an albino silverback gorilla named George flips the bird at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. How did this great ape know exactly what we were thinking? Look, we’re willing to cut …
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