Hail, Caesar! (2015), the Coen Bros.’s sly lampoon of 1950s Hollywood, is an affectionate and satirical tribute to studio filmmaking and a wittily skewed comedy of cultural politics in early 1950s America, the beginning of the end of the studio era. Set at the fictional Capitol Pictures, an MGM-like studio, and centered on Eddie Mannix […]
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 […]
Wes Anderson has made a career exploring the childhood neuroses that keep adult characters in an arrested state of adolescence and stasis. It’s been a lively career with creatively energetic high points like Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums but an approach with diminishing returns. Until Fantastic Mr. Fox, a film that refracted his portraits of dysfunctional families […]
“I’m not a miracle worker. I’m a janitor.” George Clooney simmers as Michael Clayton (2007), a legal “fixer” who works behind the scenes of a powerful New York law firm, in Tony Gilroy’s smart, sharp legal drama. When he’s sent to clean up the moral meltdown of the firm’s leading litigator (Tom Wilkinson), he unwittingly […]
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story is expanded into a sweeping survey of 20th century history and culture as seen through the eyes of a man who is born old and grows younger through the century. Brad Pitt completely commits to the part of the old/young man who […]
Okja, a social satire/political allegory/action fantasy from Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, skips theaters entirely to debut on Netflix. You may recall that it was a point of controversy at the Cannes Film Festival, not for its subject matter but because of the Netflix model of releasing its films straight to streaming. The Netflix logo elicited […]
Doctor Strange (2016), the Sorcerer Supreme of Marvel Comics, is the latest comic book hero to join Marvel’s cinematic universe and Benedict Cumberbatch (in his best impression of American arrogance) plays the broken neurosurgeon who dons the Cloak of Levitation and the Eye of Agamotto to bring magic to the MCU. He’s Stephen Strange, a […]
Okja, Bong Joon-Ho’s follow-up to Snowpiercer, will debut globally on Netflix in June, with limited theatrical release in the U.S. the same day it debuts on Netflix. Jake Gyllenhaal, Lily Collins. Paul Dano, and Tilda Swinton star in the science fiction thriller about a young girl (Seohyun An) who must risk everything to prevent a […]
Burn After Reading (2008) – After the darkness of No Country for Old Men, the Coen Bros. eased up with a deadpan espionage farce played out by small fish convinced that they are in deep waters, a film much lighter and significantly slighter but put together with such perfection that you can’t help but be […]
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) – The beloved C.S. Lewis adventure fantasy, about a quartet of English children who pass through the wardrobe of an English manor during World War II and emerge in a land of magic and danger had been adapted for TV in Britain but […]
