The Host is an example of what happens if you put multiple films into the meat grinder, chop them up and compress the pieces together. Incorporating tropes across genres as well as referencing specific films, Andy Newbery’s film shows little originality or stylistic élan but does offer an enjoyable narrative and plenty of homages for…
It feels as if Michael Caine (“Going in Style”) has been making movies like King of Thieves for decades, movies in which is character is so, so old and so, so tired of it all. You’d be tired as well, if you had to work on movies like this. One last score, one last big…
You know how, when you draw a bath and the water’s too hot to get into, so you let it sit there for a while but when you come back it’s too cold to get into, thus rendering it kind of useless? That’s what 211 is like. It’s tepid, lifeless, waste of time (if not…
Though an estranged family tackling a bank heist in order to save a sibling is a recipe for interesting discourses by way of “Dog Day Afternoon,” The Vault, unfortunately is not that kind of film. Dan Bush cut his teeth co-directing, co-writing and co-editing the extraordinarily effective thriller/horror “The Signal,” followed by the overlooked yet…
Few may realize that Going in Style is actually a remake of a 1979 film starring Academy Award winners George Burns (“The Sunshine Boys”) and Art Carney (“Harry and Tonto”) and an Oscar nominee, Lee Strasberg (“The Godfather Part 2”). The tale in that film has three senior citizens who share a small apartment in…
The plot’s familiar but the execution is fresh in this neo-western with a real country soul. Two stubble-muzzled brothers, armed with a pair of pistols and the Law at their heels, tear through the southern tip of America’s Great Plains on a small-town bank-robbing spree. The script, which won 2012’s Black List, was originally titled…
There’s a lot I wanted to like about Equity, a financial thriller featuring three central female characters, including a commanding lead performance from Anna Gunn (“Breaking Bad” TV series). It’s rare to see strong female characters in a Wall Street-set film, especially those as ambitious and calculating as the trio of leads here. And the…
