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A Goodbye From Grierson & Leitch
It’s a sad day here at Grierson & Leitch: After nearly four years of confusing you with movie reviews featuring seemingly arbitrary letter grades and inexplicable paragraph numbering, today is our last day at Deadspin. In two weeks, you can find us at our new home at The New Republic. But we want to...
<i>Creed </i>Hits Harder The Further It Gets From Rocky Balboa's Shadow
1. Creed works better as an actual movie than it does as a Rocky movie, which is quite the compliment, considering that it’s an excellent Rocky movie, too. (I hadn’t seen it yet when Grierson and I did our Rocky movie rankings on Monday; I’m higher on it than he is.) More than a mere boxing film, it...
The<i> Rocky </i>Movies, Ranked
Sylvester Stallone’s recent sit-down with Robert Rodriguez for The Director’s Chair made a pretty compelling case that the Rocky movies ought to be taken seriously as Sly’s greatest artistic achievement. Sure, most of them are exactly the same movie. (Rocky has to fight somebody no one thinks he ca...
The <i>Hunger Games</i> Are Over, But Jennifer Lawrence Is Only Getting Better
1. It seems insane to think about now, but there was a time when everyone was worried about whether or not Jennifer Lawrence could pull off the Hunger Games films. Cast as Katniss Everdeen just a year after her breakthrough in Winter’s Bone, Lawrence was considered by many an undeniable talent but a...
The Cheesy <i>Spectre </i>Suggests That James Bond's Darker, Grittier, Better Days Are Over
1. There was a time not so long ago when the very notion of James Bond seemed ridiculous—as anachronistic as making a movie about Betamax players or pay phones. There were actual thinkpieces 10 years back about whether James Bond could exist in a post-Austin Powers world. Even Daniel Craig worried a...
Here's Your Ridiculously Early 2016 Oscar Preview
The next Academy Awards will be hosted by Chris Rock and will be held on February 28, 2016. That is 130 days from now. By then, the Iowa caucus, and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, will be over. The Super Bowl will be a fading memory. Selection Sunday will be two weeks away. It is a ...
<i>Rock The Kasbah </i>Might Be Bill Murray's Worst Movie Ever
1. I love Bill Murray. You love Bill Murray. We all love Bill Murray. We love him on talk shows. We love him when he pops up in random places, doing random things. But we haven’t collectively loved a new Bill Murray movie in a long time. Sure, we’ve celebrated him in small roles: Zombieland, Moonris...
Guillermo del Toro's<i> Crimson Peak </i>Is Best Watched On Mute
1. Crimson Peak is a movie that’s all windup and no pitch. It requires a patience of you that I’m not sure it necessarily earns, and a level of patience it doesn’t feel obliged to reward. It’s not a slog; the movie always looks fantastic, and it has enough earthly delights to string you along its gr...
Spielberg's <i>Bridge of Spies</i> Is A Compelling Cold War Drama Your Granddad Will Love
1. Bridge of Spies is effective, efficient, compelling, smart and absorbing throughout, and I still couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I think we’re starting to lose the Spielberg who was a risk-taker. The guy did exist, you know. After he won his last Oscar for directing Saving Private R...
The Sucky New Peter Pan Reboot Oughta Fly Straight Into The Toilet
1. It is difficult not to approach Pan with a deep, weary sigh. I am fortunate that people pay me to write about movies, and it’s something that no one should ever take for granted, particularly in this day (year? decade? quarter-century?) of media turmoil. Every assignment is a gift. One of the man...
Danny Boyle Movies, Ranked
Danny Boyle is one of the most quietly adventurous filmmakers working today. He’ll do a science-fiction movie, then a period piece, then a Tarantino-type thriller, then a romantic comedy, then a conventional biopic, and he won’t so much as blink once. He is an auteur of the old-fashioned sort: His m...
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...
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...
<i>Everest </i>Works Best When It Focuses On The Mountain, Not The Feeble Men On It
1. If nothing else, you should see Everest on as big a screen as possible. I was fortunate enough to see it in 3-D on a digital IMAX screen—not the same as the IMAX format, mind you, there’s a difference, but still, you know, big—and I’m glad I did. The most you can hope for from a movie about Mount...
<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...
Summer Movies 2015: <i>Mad Max</i> Rises, Adam Sandler Sinks
For all the talk about how summer movies are supposedly rotting everyone’s souls, this summer produced:...
<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...
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...