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Review: The Assistant

Jan 20th, 2020 Peg Aloi

Harvey Weinstein’s name is never mentioned in The Assistant, Kitty Green’s narrative feature debut, but his presence permeates every frame. The timing of the film’s release, with the impending trial and recent fall from grace of one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, is inadvertently...

Movies

Review: Bad Boys for Life

Jan 18th, 2020Eric D. Snider

It's been nearly 25 years since Miami police detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) first teamed up to shoot bad guys and destroy property in Bad Boys. How long ago was 1995? So long ago that back then, Martin...

Movies

Review: Dolittle

Jan 16th, 2020Abby Olcese

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about Dolittle is that somewhere beneath its inappropriate jokes, poorly developed characters and Robert Downey Jr.’s bizarre acting choices, there’s a whiff of a good movie that could have been. Stephen...

Film Fests

Review: VHYes

Jan 16th, 2020Virginia Yapp

I never had a TV set in my room when I was growing up, so I’d have to sneak past my parents’ bedroom door, creep down the thickly carpeted stairs, and quietly settle into the ugly plaid couch in the family room (in New Jersey) or the basement...

Film Fests

Review: Troop Zero

Jan 16th, 2020Eric D. Snider

In 1977, NASA scientists put out the word that they'd be recording greetings from people from around the world and sending them (the recordings) into space to welcome any potential aliens who happened by. That announcement is the jumping-off point...

Tom DiCillo’s Road in and Out of <i>Oblivion</i>

Looking Back

Tom DiCillo’s Road in and Out of Oblivion

Jan 15th, 2020Craig J. Clark

The Time: The mid-’90sThe Place: Downtown New York CityThe Setting: A nondescript warehouse/film studioThe Scene: “Ellen and Damian Kiss” When it arrives, the blow-up has been a long time coming. Ever since he showed up on the set of the...

Movies

Review: The Wave

Jan 14th, 2020Josh Bell

The opening scene of Gille Klabin’s The Wave promises an edgy head-trip of a movie, as main character Frank (Justin Long) describes a drug that’s meant to simulate what happens in the brain in the moments just before death, and how taking this...

Movies

Review: Disturbing the Peace

Jan 14th, 2020Josh Bell

No matter how hard they work, Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, and John Travolta can only star in so many direct-to-VOD thrillers a year, so someone has to pick up the slack. Guy Pearce is that someone in Disturbing the Peace, a cheap, shoddy action...

Movies

Review: 1917

Jan 9th, 2020Abby Olcese

If cinema is, as Roger Ebert famously put it, a machine that generates empathy, the camera is its motor. What a director, editor, and cinematographer choose to show an audience, and the way they choose to frame it, communicates volumes about a...

Movies

Review: Three Christs

Jan 7th, 2020Josh Bell

It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke: Three Jesus Christs walk into a mental hospital, each claiming to be the real thing. But there’s nothing funny about Jon Avnet’s dreary period drama Three Christs, which is based on a real-life 1959...