“I miss the Cassie I was. I wonder what that Cassie would think of me now — the Cassie who kills.” The introductory voiceover for The 5th Wave is certainly not typical of your run-of-the-mill PG-13 fare, but unfortunately, that’s where the non-similarities end. The first act of the film introduces Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace…
Realizing that she can no longer play the roles she played when she was twenty, the now forty-year-old European actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche, “Godzilla”) faces the consequences of the passage of time. Nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014, Olivier Assayas’ (“Something in the Air”) Clouds of Sils Maria explores the life…
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is famed film director Isao Takahata’s first movie in 15 years. A labor of love that’s been eight years in the making, it draws inspiration from the 10th century tale “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” one of Japan’s oldest surviving narratives about a girl who magically comes to…
Anyone with a heartbeat knows that when given a particular set of skills and a menacing attitude Denzel Washington knows how to administer street justice. Under the constructive guidance of director Antoine Fuqua (“Olympus Has Fallen,” “Shooter”), he’s given the opportunity to do it again in the pair’s latest project, The Equalizer. As Robert McCall,…
Because no one knows Sissy Spacek. That’s the reason Carrie, the classic movie of what happens when bullying meets a hormonal telekinetic, was remade for audiences of 2013. Not because the 1970’s version by Brian De Palma had open, irritable flaws that diminished the Stephen King novel from which it was adapted that needed to…
Let’s face it, the sheer existence of the numeral “2” behind any film title automatically relegates said picture to the garbage heap of cinematic experiences (see “The Hangover Part 2” and “The Smurfs 2” as recent examples). Of course, there are rare exceptions where the sequel is better than or as good as the first,…
Movie 43 is basically the first new comedy of 2013 (“A Haunted House” does not count). It’s not, however, a comedy in the normal sense. 12 directors — Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Peter Farrelly, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner, and Jonathan van Tulleken —…
