35 years after the original Blade Runner changed the landscape of big screen science fiction, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) dared build on the dystopian portrait of the ecologically devastated urban imaged on screen by director Ridley Scott and his team of designers and artists. Just as in the original, this film is as much about […]
I don’t want to oversell Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), but this film about love and family (written by Dan Fogelman years before he created This Is Us) is a genuine romantic comedy for grown-ups. Steve Carell, playing the kind of easy-going, regular guy he’s rarely called upon for, stars as a complacent husband and father […]
Old school Hollywood music and romance is brought into the 21st century in La La Land (2016), which earned a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations and won six (losing Best Picture to Moonlight in what will surely remain the most famous Oscar night mix-up ever). Hollywood loves movies that celebrate show business and La La […]
Shane Black helped remake the modern American action movie with his screenplays Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout. For The Nice Guys (2016), he slips into flashback mode for a tribute to the old school action movies and private eye thrillers of the 1970s mixed with Black’s knowing sense of humor. Ryan Gosling is Holland […]
Sleek pulp crime cool meets arthouse style thriller in Drive (2011, R) starring Ryan Gosling as a taciturn getaway driver. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (a veteran of gritty, brutal Danish underworld dramas) with a silky smoothness and a stylized cool that recalls Le Samourai and Walter Hill’s The Driver, and an eighties vibe and […]
George Clooney seems born to the mantle of presidential candidate in The Ides of March (2011), a political drama loosely inspired by the Howard Dean presidential campaign and adapted from the play “Farrugut North” by Clooney (who also directs) and his producing partner Grant Heslov. He’s confident, cool, charming and looks every inch the telegenic […]
Lars and The Real Girl (2007) – Ryan Gosling is Lars, a shy, possibly borderline autistic child-man who mail-orders a fiancée and introduces the anatomically correct love doll as his living, breathing girlfriend. His brother (Paul Schneider) is speechless, his worried sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) understandably concerned, and the doting community plays along with an unflagging […]
