Almost 10 years ago, spurred by their hatred of how their superhero characters were being treated by Hollywood, Marvel made the brave decision to produce their own films, putting Jon Favreau in the director’s chair to give Robert Downey Jr. a chance at playing Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. Now, a decade in, we’ve seen […]
Author: Bill Gibron
Rampage
There are two givens in Hollywood. The first is that any movie based on a video game is going to stink. Even with a hit like Ready Player One proving the material can make for a fascinating fantasy adventure, something purely based on your favorite console title (Hitman, Resident Evil, Doom) is destined to fail. […]
A Quiet Place
There is nothing quite as satisfying as a sound cinematic strategy executed with skill and plenty of style. No matter how rote the material, no matter how basic it all really is, there is an aesthetic exhilaration watching an opportunity seized, not wasted. We’ve seen dozens of films about the end of the world, the […]
Ready Player One
As the song says, don’t call it a comeback. No, really. While it might seem that he stepped away from the blockbuster movie business he helped created, Steven Spielberg never really went away. Sure, you can look at films like Lincoln, The Post, and Bridge of Spies as detours into Award Season Oscar bait — […]
Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson is the novelist of filmmaking. That may sound like an oxymoron, but hear us out. Unlike a standard mainstream movie, which telegraphs each emotion and announces story beats sometimes trailers in advance, the man behind such critical hits as The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums buries his business in the details. […]
Pacific Rim: Uprising
What a difference a director makes. Five years ago, Guillermo Del Toro was looking for that elusive big budget blockbuster that would elevate his career to new commercial heights. Combining his love of kaiju and robots, he came upon the script for Pacific Rim, eventually delivering a rollicking adventure filled with eye-popping action set-pieces and […]
Downsizing
This has not been Matt Damon’s year. After the stumble that was The Great Wall, he added fuel to the #metoo fire by sounding like a defender of aggressive sexual predators. Then came Suburbicon, another misfire that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a social satire or a bleak black comedy. It was neither. […]
The Post
Long before politicians started plotting against the First Amendment, arguing that their deeds are/were being misrepresented by a nasty “fake” news media with an antagonist agenda, we relied on the Fourth Estate to keep us safe. From corruption. From collusion. From crazy conspiratorial plots and criminal activity. The ’70s became the dawn of the investigative […]
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Considering its place among the first post-Jurassic Park CG blockbusters, the Robin Williams’ vehicle Jumanji still seems like a strange film to require a sequel. Since the original film dealt with a mysterious board game, a lost boy who came back, bringing a herd of computer generated wildlife with him, you’d assume the concept was […]
The Greatest Showman
Hollywood has a problem–a musical problem. There are so many talented actors and actresses out there that can carry a tune and dance up a storm that, logically, we should be seeing a steady stream of such extravaganzas at our local Cineplex. Every year, Broadway crowns a new crowd-pleaser and films that bother to insert […]
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Few remember back when George Lucas actually considered Star Wars a “director’s franchise.” Before going with names like Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand–not exactly household names–and returning behind the camera to take on those prequels, the guide behind that galaxy far, far away actually considered names like David Lynch, Stephen Spielberg, and David Fincher to […]
Ferdinand
When the story was first tackled way back in 1938, it won an Academy Award. It was two years after the source material was initially published, and helped a fledgling animated filmmaker named Walt Disney cement his legacy as the future of his genre. Fast forward eight decades as we are being treated to the […]
I, Tonya
Looking out over today’s scandal every millisecond landscape, it’s hard to imagine a time, more than 20 years ago, where one story continuously dominated the news. But before OJ, before Bill Clinton and the Menendez Brothers, there was a little white trash ice skater who suddenly found herself surrounded by media as a bizarre conspiracy […]
The Disaster Artist
Tommy Wiseau finally won. Some 14 years after coming up with the brilliant idea of featuring himself and his writing/directing/acting talents in a stand-alone tour de force known as The Room, he is now a household name. He is a myth made real, a man longing for fame and recognition who has achieved both, in […]
The Man Who Invented Christmas
Believe it or not, there was a time when Christmas wasn’t a “thing.” People didn’t start preparing for it the minute the frost fell from the pumpkins and every product on the market didn’t feature images of a cherubic jolly old gift-giving elf. There were no such things as decorated pine trees, stockings hung by […]
Wonder
Don’t be fooled by the publicity–Wonder is not that kind of movie. What are we talking about? You know–the kind of feel good flick, the one where a fragile outsider child overcomes adversity while we all learn life lessons about tolerance and kindness in the most manipulative, mawkish way possible? Well, Wonder is not that. […]
Justice League
So here’s the good news: Justice League is not an unmitigated disaster. Yes, it’s still a weak, wonky mess with laugh out loud lines (remember “Martha?”) and tonal shift so wild you expect the resulting entertainment earthquake to produce tsunamis to rival those created by Aquaman. But for the most part, it avoids the gloomy […]
The Star
Because The Bible needs more butt jokes. No, seriously. The makers of this new holiday movie have taken a page out of the Rankin-Bass book of epic storytelling by retrofitting one of the greatest religious narratives–the birth of Jesus–and adding as many anthropomorphic talking animals as possible. But The Star is no Little Drummer Boy. […]
Daddy’s Home 2
When Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg paired up for the surreal buddy cop comedy The Other Guys, you sensed a new dim bulb dynamic duo in the making. They were funny, both playing with and against type. You sensed the chemistry between them and the affection they had for the challenge of making the audience […]
Roman J. Israel, Esq.
It’s been an issue every since the dawn of cinema. At some point, every leading man finds himself faced with the prospect of becoming a character actor (and, on occasion, visa versa). Looks fade, public interest equally nosedives and the time to reinvent oneself becomes obvious. Some can manage long past their middle age, but […]