While Cruella de Vil is an iconic Disney villain, is there much potential in showing the origin story of a character whose fashion sense leads to her wanting to skin 101 Dalmatians? The answer is a yes as prominent as the eponymous character’s bi-colored hair, as director Craig Gillespie and screenwriters Dana Fox and Tony…
Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone are back, six months after the release of their last (and worst) film, “Superintelligence.” Their latest work, Thunder Force, is a superhero comedy telling the story of best friends Lydia (McCarthy, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) and Emily (Octavia Spencer, “The Shape of Water”), who become the superhero duo known…
The Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in August 1968 to choose their presidential candidate in a tumultuous year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Prague Spring, and growing protests in cities around the world against the escalation of the Vietnam War. Although…
“Just another Wednesday,” the visibly fatigued nurse exclaims as she tends to a bullet wound of one of the guests of her dimly lit, blood spattered hotel for crooks. The only rules of the underground institution: No guns, no cops, and no killing of other guests. Throughout the film’s jaunting plot we watch thieves, assassins…
With a cut and a kick and an upbeat note, Damien Chazelle sure paints a pretty picture of classic Hollywood musical nostalgia, but La La Land is more plastic pastiche than poignant portrait. It’s a technical marvel that’s dramatically weightless, a boldly bravura effort from writer/director Damien Chazelle and his crew that’s also too cutesy…
Imagine if “Rear Window” were in motion, the fragmented but persistent yearning to see given (literal) added dynamism. What we glimpse through windows is always partial, but if viewed from a moving train the glimpse is even more fleeting. Then replace James Stewart in a wheelchair with Emily Blunt addled by alcohol and you have…
It’s nice to see a film version of an historical incident that that this author had no idea about. As a student of history, I’ve always prided myself on knowing as much as I could on as many subjects in this category as possible; and, like “Argo” (which also featured a classified backdrop) I found…
