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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...
The Abduction Drama <i>Room </i>Gets Even More Claustrophobic When They Get Out
At its halfway point, Room arrives at the moment that you might have thought would be its big finale. After being held hostage for seven years, Joy (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) execute a daring escape from their captor, a demented weirdo known only as Old Nick (Sean Bri...
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...
EAT SHIT, LEITCH!
This is Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin and world’s most annoying Cardinals fan. We love Leitch, but we also like trolling him at every possible opportunity by telling him that he is human garbage and his favorite team is a band of wingnut Puritan shitbags who hack into laptops and pepper spray...
Child War Is Hell In The Gripping, Important, Only Slightly Disappointing <i>Beasts Of No Nation</i>
Beasts of No Nation is such a worthy, timely, thoughtful drama that the worst you can say about it is that it’s a shame it’s only good and not amazing. Adapted, shot, and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (who previously directed 2009’s Sin Nombre and the first season of True Detective), this immersive...
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...
<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>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...
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...
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:...
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 ...