Ben Affleck made a confident and compelling directorial debut with Gone Baby Gone (2007), his adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s mystery novel about a pair of young private detectives (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) hired to look for the missing daughter of a junkie mother (Amy Ryan, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance). It’s […]
Snowpiercer (2013), an international production from Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho and a French graphic novel, is a high-speed allegory speeding down the science fiction tracks of genre cinema. That’s the way I like this brand of filmmaking: with the symbols big, muscular, detailed, and punchy. You either give yourself over to the metaphor, in this […]
The Way Back (2010), filmmaker Peter Weir’s first film since Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in 2003, is a protean survival drama with a human grounding. The film was barely seen in theaters, receiving a belated, haphazard release after studio delays and critical neglect. Even with a cast headed by Ed […]
The Right Stuff (1983), Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s acclaimed portrait of the original NASA astronauts, is *the* American epic of the last great frontier and a genuinely romantic take on the first generation of space cowboys. In fact, we know that Kaufman’s heart lays with test pilot cowboy Chuck Yeager, played by Sam […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Kodachrome (2017, not rated) stars Jason Sudeikis as a record industry burnout who reluctantly joins his estranged, dying father (Ed Harris) for a road trip to the last lab in America […]
Knightriders (1981) is easily the gentlest film ever made by George Romero, a romantic story of gypsy bikers who create a kind of traveling Renaissance faire built around the chivalric ideal of an Arthurian court. There’s a streak of the Camelot story played out all in modern times, but on a more intimate, human scale […]
Empire Falls (2005) – Paul Newman found one of the great roles of his career in the Robert Benton’s film of Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool (1994), playing a gently reckless cock-up of a father who gets an unexpected second chance to help his son. So it’s no surprise that he jumped at the chance to […]
Liam Neeson is back in action in the gritty crime thriller Run All Night, his third and most satisfying collaboration with filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Non-Stop). Neeson once again has a very specific skill set—his nickname isn’t Jimmy the Gravedigger for nothing—but he’s been pickling it in booze for years to drown the guilt of […]
