After viewing Uncut Gems, I found myself wondering, “Has any movie character ever so completely brought all their story’s conflict upon themselves as much as Howard Ratner does?” I guess that’s the nature of stories about addiction, that the addicts can’t help themselves and suffer horrible consequences as a result, but Howard really takes the…
Alex Garland’s Annihilation is a complex puzzle, mixing the extraterrestrial with the most microbial elements of humanity. Its characterization is strong throughout — as its themes are mirrored in its leading lady — but its most promising components come in the form of visual metaphors. They’re scattered strategically throughout the 115-minute science fiction thinker. Where…
For her fun fictionalized memoir of sorts, Greta Gerwig has painted a coming-of-age tale almost entirely in shades of grey. Lady Bird is the writer/director’s gentle, through passionately prickly look at the haze that lies just beyond adolescence, with Saoirse Ronan (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) playing Christine, the also titular protagonist who must navigate the…
Two powerful lead performances drive Fences, a tale about a black family living in Pittsburgh during the mid-1950s, that, while the overall experience is mostly negative, the impact is nonetheless a powerful and emotional undertaking. The screenplay is adapted from the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play by the late August Wilson, which was revived in…
Nostalgia and movie sequelitis are the two main ingredients that invite back the majority of films from yesteryear looking to make a big screen impact yet again. This, of course, applies to both cinematic gems and duds alike. Nowadays, the urge to tap into celebrated or soured fare from yesterday has proven to be a…
Loosely based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”), Danny Boyle’s (“127 Hours”) Steve Jobs is not a conventional biopic of the famous co-founder of Apple Computers but is more like an impressionist painting — short strokes of paint that capture the essence of the subject rather than…
Cameron Crowe’s latest film, Aloha, his first larger scale project since 2011’s “We Bought a Zoo,” does not, unfortunately, come with the zest and alacrity of it or some of his earlier better works, like “Jerry Maguire.” It is light-hearted, well-intentioned (Hawaiian virtues are espoused) fare tailored to an audience that sees space as something…
