The climax of “Divergent” that saw the young divergent Tris (Shailene Woodley) escape with her life after a face-off with the manipulative leader of the Erudites (Kate Winslet) may have been anti-climatic but that won’t keep a good YA series from marching on. Realizing there is more to her story in this post-apocalyptic Chicago, in…
It is not hard to figure out where St. Vincent, the latest Bill Murray vehicle for comic grouchiness, is headed, but director Theodore Melfi makes you want to jump aboard and go along for the ride anyway. Murray isn’t exactly cuddly but, you know, every saint has some sinner-like traits. Murray, as Vincent, the next-door…
“For what else is the life of man but a kind of play in which men in various costumes perform until the director motions them offstage?” – Erasmus Once you add up the upcoming films from Marvel and DC studios, there are twenty-two “superhero” films being planned over the course of the next four years….
Now this is something interesting from Fox Searchlight. It’s Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) and it tells the tale of a has-been actor desperate for a comeback. From the trailer, it’s clear he hasn’t taken his fall from the spotlight very well, battling with his own internal demons as well as co-stars (and…
Early in 2013, a small film, Adore, based on the novella “The Grandmothers” by Doris Lessing played at the Sundance Film Festival. It screened in limited release in the US in September, and then quietly went to DVD. The film takes on an uncomfortable story of two grown women — the best of childhood friends…
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 —…
Cinematic sentimental gestures don’t come much more desperately inspirational than the slow motion shot of a person reaching skyward with a swelling score accompanying their ascent. In his syrupy drama The Impossible, director J.A. Bayona reserves this moment for the third act, but it’s not like the sentimentality sneaks up on us. This kind of…
