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<i>Steve Jobs</i> May Be About The Apple Guru, But Aaron Sorkin Is The Real Star
The trick to enjoying an Aaron Sorkin project is to never take it as seriously as he does. The creator of The West Wing and The Newsroom and the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network doesn’t write dialogue—he stages showy talk-fests that are meant to either show off how smart his characte...
Get Your Ass Off Mars: <i>The Martian </i>Is A Thrilling, Crowd-Pleasing Science Problem
1. The Martian will make you feel better about America, about the goodness of your fellow man, about the limitless possibilities of human achievement. That it’s also rooted in hard science (or at least a movie’s version of hard science, which is close enough), that all its surprises and accomplishme...
<i>The Walk</i> Is A Cloying, Uneven Caper With An Absolutely Amazing Final Act
The feat that made Philippe Petit legendary—his tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974—was both brave and insane. What made 2008’s Man on Wire, the Oscar-winning documentary about his achievement, so striking was that despite full access to Petit and his co...
The Gambling Drama <i>Mississippi Grind </i>Will Break Your Heart
When their eyes first meet, there’s an immediate spark, or perhaps a shared recognition. Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) sells houses, but he’s not particularly good at it, mostly because he doesn’t care at all about his job, and only gets excited about the next time he can gamble. Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) is ...
The Idiotic <i>Stonewall </i>Is A Bigger Disaster Than Roland Emmerich's Actual Disaster Movies
1. Stonewall misses the point of the Stonewall riots in almost the exact same way that Pearl Harbor missed the point of Pearl Harbor. That’s not a comparison I make lightly. Pearl Harbor turned one of the most seminal moments in American history into the pretext for a lame story about two white schm...
Robert De Niro Redeems The Dopey Fantasy That Is <i>The Intern</i>
At a time when some romantic comedies are flexing an edgier, more smart-ass tone—They Came Together, Sleeping With Other People, even Trainwreck—perhaps it’s a refreshing palate-cleanser that Nancy Meyers movies continue to operate in their own storybook world. You know what to expect from the write...
<i>Black Mass </i>Plays Like A Boston-Mob-Thriller Parody
1. Whatever your thoughts on The Departed or The Town—the modern Boston mob/crime thrillers that all modern Boston mob/crime thrillers are measured against—it is undeniable that everyone involved was deeply invested in both. Matt Damon had been waiting his whole life to play a character like his Dep...
<i>The Visit</i> Proves That M. Night Shyamalan Is Still Trying Way Too Hard
1. Man oh man, remember the Newsweek that dubbed M. Night Shyamalan “The Next Spielberg?” Has an entertainment-cover of a national newsmagazine ever aged worse? All right, maybe this one. But man, that Newsweek cover might have been the worst thing that ever happened to Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense wa...
Richard Gere's Homelessness Drama <i>Time Out Of Mind </i>Will Hit You Hard
1. New York City is obviously the central setting of thousands of movies, and, being New York City, it’s adept at serving as whatever backdrop you want it to serve. It can connote romance or menace, limitless possibility or untold decadence, Candyland or the Hellmouth. But, as someone who lived ther...
Toronto Film Festival 2015: 10 Movies We Can’t Wait To See
The 40th Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday, represents both what’s great and what’s maddening about the fall movie season. With the summer blockbusters behind us, we can focus more on serious, ambitious dramas—though some of those might turn out to be lame awards bait or pretentious mi...
The Dystopian Love Triangle <i>Z For Zachariah </i>Proves That Hell Is Other People
One of the best things about Z for Zachariah, the new drama starring Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine, is that even after seeing the movie twice, I still have no idea how I feel about any of its three protagonists. That’s by design. Based on Robert C. O’Brien’s 1974 sci-fi novel, the ...
<i>American Ultra </i>Is A Sweet, Ultraviolent Stoner Love Story
1. There’s an undeniable kick in watching a reedy nerd unleash cinematic violence, particularly when he’s confused by it, separate from the act, almost observing it. I’ve always thought this was the initial, primal appeal of The Matrix, how Keanu Reeves was a weirdly dispassionate participant in his...
<i>Straight Outta Compton</i> Celebrates The Day The Bad Guys Won
Director F. Gary Gray’s group-endorsed new N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton brings us back to a time when hip-hop didn’t yet dominate popular culture. Now that rap has long been at the forefront of pop music, it’s easy to forget that in the 1980s, the form wasn’t just new but also novel, an outsi...
You'll Forget About <i>The Man From U.N.C.L.E. </i>While You're Still Watching It
1. You need a pretty good reason to resuscitate The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—a ’60s television series that went off the air before Jay Z was born—and I’m afraid Guy Ritchie’s movie version doesn’t have one. Perfectly passable, generic, and inoffensive, it vanishes from your brain almost while you’re watc...
Please Let This Be The Last Fantastic Four<i> </i>Movie
1. You know, until everybody turns into a superhero, the new Fantastic Four reboot isn’t half bad. You can see what they were trying to do. We watch four ambitious, incredibly smart young kids come together to work on a science project that has the potential to change the world; they’re played by so...
Meryl Streep Rocks Out: <i>Ricki And The Flash</i> Could've Been Worse
Ricki and the Flash could’ve easily been yet another broad, obvious dysfunctional-family comedy. It’s right there in the setup: A middle-aged woman who years ago abandoned her buttoned-down Midwestern husband and kids to be a rock ’n’ roll star must now make amends, setting up a feel-good redemption...
The David Foster Wallace Movie Gets Our Vision Of Him Right, At Least
The End of the Tour, a drama about a five-day interview/road trip that took place between novelist David Foster Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky in 1996, has already received significant pushback from those closest to the late author, who committed suicide in 2008. Wallace’s estate an...
The New <i>Mission: Impossible </i>Is Almost Better Than The New <i>Mad Max</i>
1. I think if the Mission: Impossible franchise starred anyone other than Tom Cruise, we’d regard all these movies as classics. All five have been excellent in their own ways, but unlike any other franchise I can think of, each sequel is better than its predecessor. Each has a different director, an...
The Lifeless <i>Vacation </i>Reboot Is All Bowels And No Heart
1. The original 1983 National Lampoon’s Vacation is a classic because deep down, it’s essentially a sweet movie. The screenplay was written by John Hughes—based off the short story “Vacation ’58,” which he wrote about a family trip to Disneyworld, and which ultimately got him on the staff of Nationa...
The Super-Macho <i>Southpaw </i>Is Trying Way Way Way Too Hard
If you know one thing about Southpaw, which tells the story of a champion boxer who loses everything and fights to get most of it back, it’s that its star, Jake Gyllenhaal, went through a crazy training regimen to prepare for the role. It comes up in every interview, and winds up being the focal poi...