leitch Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
<em>Happy Valley</em> Could Be Anywhere, And That's The Scariest Part
Late in Amir Bar-Lev's harrowing and deeply fair documentary Happy Valley, which tracks the Jerry Sandusky tragedy at Penn State and its craterous aftermath, attorney Andrew Shubin, who represented several of Sandusky's victims, says:...
Sequel Fatigue: <em>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1</em>, Reviewed
I've now seen three Hunger Games films, and I feel confident saying that eventually, something is finally going to happen in one of them. There's been no shortage of incidents—action scenes, plot twists, emotional moments—but what's strange about this series is that everything always seems to ...
So Stupid It Just Might Work: <em>Dumb And Dumber To</em>, Reviewed
1. Before you get too wrapped up in the negative early reaction to Dumb and Dumber To, the 20-years-later sequel to the 1994 mega-hit, remember that critics hated the first one. Critics are notoriously bad at predicting what comedies are going to stand the test of time; the target is always moving...
Despicable Us: <em>Foxcatcher</em>, Reviewed
Foxcatcher is a movie about America, but what makes it so compelling is that you don't realize it at first. Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball), the film is too subtle—and, frankly, too strange—to explicitly make some simple, overarching, grandiose statement. And yet, when you replay ...
The Superhero Starter Kit: <em>Big Hero 6</em>, Reviewed
If you were trying to turn a kid onto action films for life, you could do a lot worse than starting him or her off with Big Hero 6. So fundamentally familiar that its alternate title might as well be My First Marvel Superhero Movie, it does just about everything you'd expect from an animated ad...
Christopher Nolan's <em>Interstellar</em> Is Half-Unwieldy And Half-Amazing
Two years ago, just as I was about to see The Dark Knight Rises, I wrote a glowing overview of its director's career. A huge fan of Christopher Nolan since his second feature, 2000's Memento, I explained how he had almost single-handedly restored my faith in blockbusters thanks to his Batman films...
Get On The Jake Gyllenhaal Bandwagon Now: <em>Nightcrawler</em>, Reviewed
1. Why don't we talk about Jake Gyllenhaal more? This is an actor who...
2015 Oscar Watch: Yes, It's Time To Start Arguing About This Already
As of this second, we are 122 days away from the 2015 Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris as Billy Crystal growls angrily in the corner and everyone tries real hard not to make a Renee Zellweger joke. That's a ludicrously long time from now, but there won't be a single moment between now...
Edward Snowden, Before The Storm: <em>Citizenfour</em>, Reviewed
Movies are lots of things, but "important" isn't one of them. It's not that they can't be meaningful and life-changing, but when a critic's praise tries to go beyond that, it raises red flags for me....
Michael Keaton Forever: <em>Birdman</em>, Reviewed
Birdman doesn't have any right being as fantastic as it is. Structured around a gimmick—the whole movie is meant to look like one continuous shot—and featuring a potentially eye-rolling plot device (a has-been actor's personal and professional life comes crashing down on him in the days before...
Bill Murray's Memes Now Outshine His Movies, And <em>St. Vincent</em> Won't Help
What was the last great Bill Murray performance? Maybe Broken Flowers from 2005? Lost in Translation from 2003? Nowadays, some of his best work—or at least the work that gets the most attention—is nowhere near the big screen. He shows up at bachelor parties. He crashes regular folks' engagemen...
Love, Actually: David Fincher's Dark, Thrilling <em>Gone Girl</em>, Reviewed
In early 2011, when David Fincher was getting ready to shoot The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo while in the midst of Oscars promotion for The Social Network, the director made a revealing comment about how he separates his work into two categories: "movies" and "films." To his mind, Fight Club a...
André 3000 Channels Hendrix, Finds Himself In <em>Jimi: All Is By My Side</em>
In the early 2000s, OutKast seemed poised for world-conquering superstardom. But flush with the success of 1998's Aquemini and 2000's Stankonia (and hit singles like "Rosa Parks" and "Ms. Jackson"), the Atlanta hip-hop duo of André 3000 and Big Boi fractured instead. When the double-solo-album...
Denzel Washington Will Kick Your Ass Now: <em>The Equalizer</em>, Reviewed
1. I know we just talked about Liam Neeson around here, but I feel obliged to bring him back up, because suffice it to say, if Liam Neeson doesn't have the aforementioned late-career action-movie rebirth, there is no way The Equalizer exists. Ostensibly a big-screen reboot of the CBS crime procedu...
The Badass-Action-Hero Rebirth Of Liam Neeson
Does anybody else remember when Liam Neeson was kind of a wimp? It might seem strange, now that he spends every movie beating up everyone in sight (and inspiring a particularly wonderful Key & Peele sketch: "He straight jacked up them wolves!"), but when Neeson was younger—and presumably stronger ...
Family Futile: <em>This Is Where I Leave You</em>, Reviewed
This Is Where I Leave You feels like a social experiment in how much slack we're willing to cut a movie filled with actors we like. There's nothing particularly new or interesting in this umpteenth story about a family coming together after the death of one of their own, and yet the collective g...
Toronto Film Festival 2014: 10 Movies We Can't Wait To See
The Toronto Film Festival, which starts Thursday, is always excellent one-stop shopping for many of the major films hoping to crash the Oscar and best-of-the-year conversations. Beyond the world premieres, it also features the best of what played at Cannes, as well as plenty of films that alread...
The Best And Worst 2014 Summer Movies: A Grierson And Leitch Report
If you ask the bean-counters, this was a disappointing summer: Almost every major sequel underperformed (Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Expendables 3, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were all the lowest-grossing entries in their respective series), and there were some truly ugly flops, most n...
Stay Home: Four Great New Indie Movies, Available On Demand
As we've mentioned in the past, Labor Day weekend is one of the worst on the Hollywood calendar. It's when studios dump their duds, knowing full well that everyone is too busy doing one last barbecue before summer ends. So rather than suffering through The November Man or As Above, So Below, w...
Film Noir For Dummies—<em>Sin City: A Dame to Kill For</em>, Reviewed
1. The original Sin City movie felt so inventive and revolutionary in 2005 that it's not really fair to make fun of it for how poorly it holds up now ... but you can't help it. For all the loveliness of Frank Miller's compositions—and considering how lousy his co-director Robert Rodriguez's movies...