There is a moment early in Kenneth Branagh’s intricately constructed adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunnit when Hercule Poirot (Branagh) stands on the deck of a ship as it leaves Istanbul. Poirot is captured center frame: The deck, the railing, the adjacent cabin and the sea itself are balanced perfectly around him. The shot is…
Martin McDonagh’s (“Seven Psychopaths”) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a mix of black (and politically incorrect) comedy and heartfelt drama that takes us on a wild, mostly improbable but highly entertaining ride. Set in the fictional town of Ebbing, Missouri, Frances McDormand (“Burn After Reading”), who carries the film in one of her best…
Subjects can be covered extensively from many angles and the character and attitude of a specific time or place can be lost in translation; luckily that this is not the case with 12th and Clairmount. The long hot summer of 1967 would culminate in 159 race riots across the United States, with Detroit, Michigan home…
The digital age is slickly skewered on the sharp blade of a knife that cuts a clean swath of revenge through a wealthy family’s existence in sick satirist Yorgos Lanthimos’ genre-blurring The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Lanthimos buries his satirical observations deep and then brushes away select portions of the surface to reveal grim…
There has not been a penetrating and provocative documentary in my recent memory that chronicles with such curiosity, the insight and intimacy into the musical process and romantic partnership disillusionment than Swedish director-writer-producer Kasper Collin’s compelling and resonating true crime documentary, I Called Him Morgan. Collin (“My Name Is Albert Ayler”) provides a winning, yet…
Suburbicon, the worst and even worse timed movie of the year, feels like someone put “Pleasantville,” “Fargo,” and the Vault Tech initiation videos from the Fall Out video game franchise into a blender in a grotesque, heavy on the white-splaning approximation of the recipe for “Do the Right Thing.” The resulting slop, entirely missing ingredients…
From Joe Lynch, director of “Everly,” comes Mayhem, an ugly mishmash of the zombie apocalypse and tower assault subgenres. Unwisely referencing “A Clockwork Orange” in the opening, with Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie” overlaid on some stylized ultra-violence, Derek (Steven Yeun, “Okja”) explains the “IV7” virus via narration. It’s a condition which purportedly causes the sufferer…
