By the 1950s, Hollywood’s Golden Age was waning, its studio system crumbling in favor of “New Wave” films and younger visionaries. The wholesome names of the 1920s and ’30s were now the distant past, though their legacies would be cemented among Hollywood’s greatest. Nevertheless, pressing on amid this sweeping change were two iconic personalities of…
Does anyone want to play a game? Shake your head if it’s Max (Jason Bateman, “Office Christmas Party”) and Annie (Rachel McAdams, “Doctor Strange”) asking, unless losing is your thing. In a slickly assembled montage, the couple is revealed to be “all day, every day” champions of trivia, scrabble and charades. But they’re only game-night…
There is an idealized Wonder Woman. It’s vague and often inconsistent in description, but seemingly ethereal in public consciousness, in spite of any prior comic book knowledge, or lack thereof. I would compare the cultural assumption to Superman, and the balancing act the original Richard Donner film had to pull off. The benefit of finally…
It’s Comic-Con time again so that means it’s time for a flurry of movie trailers. One of the first major ones to drop is the next cog in DC’s cinematic universe, Wonder Woman (A “Justice League” trailer showed up too). She was introduced to fans in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but this one…
For years now, Tim Burton has seemingly lost the ability to surprise. So his latest picture succeeds on that modest level by actually being somewhat decent. Big Eyes, a strange true story about deceit in the world of art and marriage, is hardly Burton at his best, but it’s certainly Burton at his most enjoyable…
Part live-action and part animation, Israeli director Ari Folman’s The Congress presents a sharp picture of the Hollywood of the future in which flesh and blood actors have been replaced by computer images, scanned to capture them at the most productive point of their career (technology that Folman discovered already exists). Loosely based on Stanislaw…
There’s a unique sprinkling of cinematic magic that touches the infamous shower scene in “Psycho” so memorably and effectively that watching the scene, dissecting the scene, experiencing the scene is great fun from any angle. So with this automatic reaction hardwired to my senses, I very much enjoyed seeing the scene recreated with moderate gusto…
