Star Trek Beyond Movie Review

One of the great things about Star Trek, be it any of the series or many of the feature films, is the way it has always put ideas at the forefront of its stories, valuing philosophy and political science above action and swashbuckling. Even First Contact, my absolute favorite of all the movies, found a way to work some excellent action sequences into a film that was mostly about ideas and really developed some of the characters.

Cafe Society Movie Review

There’s not much left for Woody Allen to say in his movies, is there? He’s already been walking the same ground for decades, hitting the same themes and even repeating (or so it feels) zingers and one-liners. After fifty plus films in as many years, how could he not? He puts out a new movie every year like clockwork. Sometimes it’s as if he’s going through the motions and occasionally he gives us something inspired, as with Midnight in Paris or Blue Jasmine. His latest is Café Society, which is far better than the recent misfire of Magic in the Moonlight but still falling short of genuine genius.

Jason Bourne Movie Review

Jason Bourne’s story was told through a trilogy of films that concluded nearly a decade ago. From The Bourne Identity, which saw Matt Damon playing the title amnesiac trying to figure out who he was, why people were trying to kill him, and how he was so capable with his fists, his language, automobiles, and weapons, to the capper The Bourne Ultimatum in which he remembers everything and handily exposes the CIA program that made him who he was we saw Damon and director Paul Greengrass (for the two sequels) reinvent the action spy thriller for the new millennium. Bourne’s story being complete, the franchise attempted to skew in a different direction with Jeremy Renner starring. Now Damon and Greengrass have reunited, I suppose catching on to the popularity of series reboots that have cropped up all over Hollywood in recent years.

Finding Dory Movie Review

The Pixar Animation Studio has been a little hit or miss with their sequels. The two Toy Story follow-ups are stellar, but Cars 2 doesn’t even measure up to its predecessor, which wasn’t great to begin with. Monsters University carried on the story in a really interesting way, going back to show us how Mike and sully got where they were. It enriches Monsters, Inc. So who knew what to expect with Finding Dory? The biggest error of Cars 2 was the belief that a great supporting character could be the centerpiece of a movie. Dory Added so much to Finding Nemo and she was the most beloved character there. But could her short term memory loss affliction carry an entire movie?

The Infiltrator Movie Review

The world surely has no shortage of movies about the international drug trade or about law enforcement using everything in their arsenal to take down the cartels. There’s also plenty of movies about the perils of going undercover to take down a criminal organization. The Infiltrator combines both for a premise that is not especially original, but which is often enthralling. There’s something about the story of a person who goes into another world pretending to be something they’re not. There’s the adrenaline rush of going into the danger zone. There’s the excitement of getting to be someone else for a while leading a sort of double life. It’s like getting a chance to be someone and do something that you’re not. Who wouldn’t like the opportunity to see how that fits? Of course who wants to take with it the possibility of getting killed?

Ghostbusters Movie Review

In this era of reboots, sequels, re-imaginings, and reinventions, one thing has consistently escaped the Hollywood executives who greenlight this stuff. They continue to make blockbuster cinema a boys club, catering to and casting men in most major action and comedy films. But leave it to Paul Feig, the director of the hysterically funny female response to the male gross-out comedy – Bridesmaids – to bring us the female Ghostbusters. A second sequel in the franchise was part of Hollywood lore for years with talk of Chris Farley being involved shortly before his death in 1997. But now we finally, at long last, even though almost no one was demanding it, have a new Ghostbusters with the all-lady cast of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon.

Midnight Special Movie Review

The enticement of big studio backing, larger budgets, and wider distribution must be great to successful indie filmmakers. Jeff Nichols had a string of well-received films that did well on the festival circuit and then got a lot more money for his fourth feature, Midnight Special. Unlike what often happens with directors who display talent on the small scale, Nichols didn’t move on to the latest superhero movie or some other blockbuster. Instead he took the money to make his own story and make it without the limitations he surely faced in the past due to budget constraints.

Captain America: Civil War Movie Review

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one hell of an impressive machine. It has churned out three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies, a dedicated Hulk movie, two Avengers movies, Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and now a third Captain America movie (or Avengers depending on how you look at it). Through all of it, the stories have toyed with more important themes and topicality. They have often remained a notch above just popcorn and candy, explosions and mayhem. Now, after lots and lots of catastrophic destruction in the name of heroism and the self-anointed good trying to stymie evil, Captain America: Civil War aims to dive deep on the divide between those who would allow for an unchecked team of independent heroes (or vigilantes, call them what you will) and those who would seek to control them, track them, and direct them in order to minimize collateral damage and tamp down the public belief that these “enhanced individuals” are running roughshod over the globe.

The Witch Movie Review

As a first time feature film maker, Robert Egger demonstrates a skilled and assured hand at how to handle material that is delicate on several fronts. The Witch, which he wrote and directed, deals with puritanical religious dogma of the seventeenth century, witchcraft, and also the conventions of horror and psychological thrillers. So much could have gone wrong in setting a tone and a pace, but Eggers gets most of it right.

For starters, he set his film nearly four centuries ago in New England. As such the dialogue, much of which is taken from contemporaneous transcripts and texts, contains a style that, to the ears of a 21^st century American, sounds like something out of a restoration village where actors pretend they know nothing about modern technology. Also the family at the center of the movie, who have been banished from the village for “prideful conceit”, exercise such deep religious conviction that we might feel uncomfortable laughter coming on. But the events that transpire are no laughing matter.

Deadpool Movie Review

For all the hoopla surrounding Deadpool – strong box office receipts; excellent audience reception; and even positive critical consensus – it doesn’t take long to look past the surface to see that there’s not really much there apart from an admittedly entertaining comic book adaptation. Shouldn’t that be enough for a comic book superhero movie? We go for the entertainment, right? But nothing else?

This may be a case of people getting a little too excited just because the movie attempts to break ranks with the clichés of the genre. Instead of pleasant PG-13 action that’s short on bad language and long on mild violence, Deadpool sears up and down, there’s sex, and the violence (though cartoonish) very violent and full of blood. This ground has been trod before. Kick Ass got there first, although I think Deadpool does it better and with great moral clarity.

Dough Movie Review

It feels almost obscene to speak negatively of a film like Dough. It has only the best intentions. It is not malicious and takes on several noble subjects that are both particular to its London setting as well as universal in the multicultural 21^st century.

Jonathan Pryce is a wonderful actor who has made a career of flying just under the radar of superstardom. Here he plays Nat Dayan, proprietor of a kosher bakery that is on the brink of failure alongside the corporate one-stop shopping convenience next door. He’s hardly recognizable behind a thick beard and gristled locks of hair, and a yarmulke. Nat clings to an old way of life in which the family business passes from father to son and the Jewish community thrives in perpetuity. But time marches on and change comes. His son became a successful lawyer and the Jews are fleeing (most likely to the suburbs as they earn their continued financial successes), being replaced by immigrants and refugees, many of them African Muslims.

A War Movie Review

The Danish entry and nominee for this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar is A War written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. This is one of the more unusual foreign films you’ll see in that it more closely resembles a Hollywood film than most. It’s easy to forget that American soldiers haven’t been the only ones doing the fighting and dying in Afghanistan. A coalition of many nations sent soldiers there and A War is about a company of Danish men and women patrolling the countryside and villages to keep the Taliban at bay.