What do scary clowns and nostalgia have in common? They are equally obvious and effective devices. Also, they are the air in the balloon of Andy Muschietti’s new version of It. I don’t want to begrudge the pragmatist filmmaker for taking the direct route and giving the people what they want, especially because this is…
You probably follow a Taylor Sloane-type online. Or, perhaps, you’ve seen her smiling at you from the pages of a cool magazine, rattling off her favorite places to get avocado toast or shop for crystals. She’s the kind of girl who matches her manicure to the book she’s reading (maybe Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter or…
Luis Prieto’s Kidnap zips by too quickly to pay much mind to logic or plausibility. It’s so swift that it’s simultaneously a nightmare scenario and revenge fantasy in its portrait of one mother’s quest in a minivan to catch up with the kidnappers who stole her kid when her back was turned for a few seconds at an…
As expected, it appears that The Emoji Movie is just one giant troll from stoned Hollywood execs who wanted to see how many people would pay to see a movie about animated talking emoticons. It’s the worst movie of all time since the last worst movie of all time. As with any bad film, more entertaining than the product…
New York Magazine film critic David Edelstein published a review of Wonder Woman last week that, unsurprisingly, dedicated a lot of words to star Gal Godot’s body.
The only good thing about the mostly overrated Wonder Woman is the slight erection it gave me—slight, I’ll emphasize, not full; my dick has been known to get harder and more impressive, but I’m in a forgiving mood.
When I was 13, I believed that I should have an arranged marriage. After overhearing me tell an incredulous friend about how the traditional Indian system worked, my eighth grade social studies teacher asked if we would open our debate to the class in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. Always enthusiastic to share my…
Of the two pages of borderline incomprehensible scribbles I jotted down during a decidedly uncrowded showing of Snatched last night, the one that I was most drawn to when revisiting them this morning was, “She keeps saying ECUADOR?!” (The “she” in that case refers to both of the films stars, Amy Schumer and the great…
As is the case with several recent high-profile films, the hype surrounding Donald Trump’s First 100 Days has eclipsed the actual production. At this point, it’s almost impossible to separate the two—and why should we? When a network or studio goes around town comparing their new release to Casablanca or Citizen Kane,…
Some books are just impossible to adapt. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is one of them. Author Rebecca Skloot’s breathtaking saga of a black woman in 1950s Baltimore is a tour de force that details the way Henrietta Lacks’s cells, removed from her without permission while she was treated for cancer, have…
The Boss Baby, an animated children’s movie starring the voice of The Actor Man Alec Baldwin as a baby who defies all odds, social norms, and expectations for humans who have not yet learned how to go pee pee in the potty by becoming a boss, is scheduled to be released in theaters across this weary country on Friday,…
“At one point you’ve got it and then you lose it and then it’s gone forever,” went Sickboy’s unifying theory of life, as espoused in Danny Boyle’s 1996 Scottish movie-cum-international phenomenon Trainspotting (based on Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel of the same name). Then Sickboy used examples like David Bowie and Lou…
When people tell you Personal Shopper is a “ghost story,” you might nod and interpret their commentary as meaning it’s not literally about ghosts, and instead about a character—Kristen Stewart, probably—who is haunted by the memory of a dead loved one. But you’d only be half right. Personal Shopper is a ghost story in…
Plenty of people fear the dark. But there’s a particular anxiety felt among white people walking alone in the dark in black neighborhoods. Get Out opens with a similar sense of dread, but from a black man’s perspective. The character, Andre (Atlanta’s Lakeith Stanfield), is lost in the suburbs at night. He’s aware…
Somewhere in the middle of Bright Lights, the new HBO documentary about Hollywood legends Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Reynolds’s home alarm goes off as she’s being interviewed. The camera wobbles from side to side as the crew tries to figure out how to shut the screeching thing off, an irritated Fisher shuffles…
Do you long for a film that trenchantly critiques America’s economic inequities through the story of a strong female lead? If so, John Hamburg’s objectively terrible Why Him? is not for you. But just because a movie features a gratuitous KISS cameo, floods of moose urine, and a shirtcocking James Franco doesn’t mean…
The trailers for the space movie Passengers make it look like a galactic romcom version of Cast Away or Titanic where nothing interesting ever happens. Much of that first impression turns out to be true, according to film critics.
“That’s L.A.—they worship everything and they value nothing,” sighs Ryan Gosling’s La La Land character Sebastian. I’m not sure if this is a critique or a mission statement. Perhaps it’s both. Certainly, a movie that forces you to endure Gosling and Emma Stone sing multiple songs is trading in the crass depths of…
Folks, the critics were right. After seeing it a local multiplex over the weekend, I’m happy to report that Denis Villeneuve’s new alien-visitation film Arrival is quite good.
I don’t watch footage of violent encounters on Facebook, but I happened to catch the footage of the murder of Philando Castile not long after it had been posted. I thought it had to be a trailer for a movie or something similar. There was no way a death would play out in front of me straight from my laptop, the place…
