Category: drama
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Dunkirk [2017] ★★★½
Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” is a knockout. But it’s also a rare example of a war movie that isn’t purely made to satisfy a mainstream audience. In a recent interview with Criterion, Nolan has named Terrence Malik’s 1998 masterpiece “The Thin Red Line” as one of his favorite films. After watching “Dunkirk”, one might even say…
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Inconceivable [2017] ★
It’s only July, but Nicolas Cage has already been in two movies that rank among the worst of the year: First, “Arsenal” back in February, and now “Inconceivable”, a laughably bad thriller that recycles every shitty cliché in the book. Cage is reduced to supporting role, but that doesn’t mean that the movie gets better…
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2:22 [2017] ★
Preposterous doesn’t even begin to describe this movie, so I’ll try to paint you a picture: Michiel Huisman plays a New York City air traffic controller who begins to notice a repetition of sounds and events in his life that happen at exactly the same time everyday. Hallucinations? Dreams? Signs? Your head will explode trying…
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Ranking the Spider-Man Movies
“SpiderMan: Homecoming” is coming in July, which makes this the perfect time to rank the Spider-Man movies. One of the most popular superheroes of all time, “Spider-Man” finally made his debut on the big screen in 2002. I already mentioned in a previous post that Spider-Man 2 (2004) is my favorite film so far. But…
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Gifted [2017] ★★½
“Gifted” is a crowd-pleaser, a likable little film fulfilled by director Marc Webb, Chris Evans, and their talented young star, Mckenna Grace. If you want, you can think of it as the anti-blockbuster, the opposite of a big movie for the summer season. Instead, it’s an old-fashioned story about a single man (Evans) who is raising his…
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Everything, Everything [2017] ★★½
“Everything, Everything” features two extremely likable characters that it almost doesn’t matter that it isn’t very original. God knows I’ve suffered through endless romantic movies based on Nicholas Sparks’ books, so it’s always refreshing to encounter a love story that doesn’t have Sparks’ signature written all over it. The author, this time, is Nicola Yoon,…
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The Lost City Of Z [2017] ★★★
An old-fashioned tale of adventure and discovery is probably the last thing audiences will choose to see at the movies this weekend. Damn shame. “The Lost City of Z”, written and directed by James Gray (“Two Lovers”, “We Own The Night”) with a keen eye for detail, is an impressive piece of work, featuring a…
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6 Great Nicolas Cage Movies
People often ask me: why do you hate Nicolas Cage? Truth be told, I don’t. Aside from the shitty movies he’s been doing for the past decade, Cage is an Oscar winner and one the most popular stars of the 90’s. Let’s take a closer look at some of his finest moments. Yes, they do…
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The Promise [2017] ★★★
For the very first time, a big budget Hollywood production starring an all star cast tells a love story amidst the Armenian genocide. No wonder the Turks are angry. Screw them. “The Promise”, starring Oscar Isaac, Christian Bale and Charlotte Le Bon, promises an emotional ride and delivers, as we follow the story of Michael…
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Vengeance: A Love Story [2017] ★★
I approach every Nicolas Cage movie with the same level of enthusiasm. Will it be as bad as the previous one? Maybe worse? Having suffered through “Arsenal” just a couple of months ago, I expected the worse here. So here’s the good news: “Vengeance” is a watchable mess. It’s still trash, but the kind of trash…
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Aftermath [2017] ★★
A drama about loss and grief is the last thing I expected to see Arnold Schwarzenegger star in. And yet, it starts out well enough: a man (Schwarzenegger) is on his way to pick up his wife and daughter from the airport when he’s informed that their plane has crashed and that there are no…
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The Salesman [2016] ★★★½
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s “The Salesman” deservedly won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language movie. When I saw it last night, I had to stay in my seat for several minutes afterwards to take it all in. This is a rollercoaster of emotions that builds slowly and deliberately, leading up to an unforgettable climax. Part…
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Death Of A Cyclist [1955] ★★★½
Today’s classic film recommendation is Juan Antonio Bardem’s masterful “Death of a Cyclist”, released in the mid 1950’s under the Franco regime. It’s clear that Bardem’s aim was to criticize the huge gap between the poor and the rich, which explains why the movie was censored and Bardem was “forced” to change a key plot…
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Paterson [2016] ★★½
To say that writer/director Jim Jarmusch makes unusual movies would be the understatement of the year. Sometimes, the result is unforgettable, as in “Stranger than Paradise”. Sometimes, you just want to turn the damn thing off, as in “Only Lovers Left Alive” (sue me). “Paterson” falls somewhere in between: it’s a quiet, intriguing look at…
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Nocturnal Animals [2016] ★★★
I’m ashamed to say that I’m a bit late coming to this movie, but having witnessed Amy Adams in one of the best performances of her career in Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece “Arrival”, I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into “Nocturnal Animals”. And I wasn’t wrong: this is a scary, stylish, and terrifically twisted film…
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Before I Fall [2017] ★★
In this teen flick based on Lauren Oliver’s bestselling book, Zoey Deutch plays a young woman who wakes up every morning to discover that she is reliving Groundhog Day all over again. I’m kidding, of course, but no one can deny the similarities between the two films, which is why it’s so easy to dismiss “Before I…
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A Dog’s Purpose [2017] ★★
The greatest trick “A Dog’s Purpose” tried to pull was convincing its audience that “no animals were harmed during the making of this film”. Prior to the film’s release, a video emerged online, showing a German Shepherd being forced into a water tank to shoot a scene. I tried to ignore this incident as I…
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T2 Trainspotting [2017] ★★★
It took writer John Hodge and director Danny Boyle 20 years to cook up a sequel to “Trainspotting”, one of the most talked about movies of the 90’s and a cult classic. Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller and Ewen Bremmer were in their mid-20’s when the first film was released. Now they’re all back in “T2”,…
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Hidden Figures [2016] ★★★
I don’t pretend to understand everything about “Hidden Figures”, about three brilliant women who worked for NASA in the early 1960’s, but instead of being put off, I found myself intrigued, even wanting to know more about the work they did following the events of this film. Taraji P. Henson is perfectly cast as a mathematical genius…
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Gold [2017] ★★½
I can’t imagine anyone other than Matthew McConaughey in the role of Kenny Wells, a Nevada prospector who teamed up with a mining engineer in the 1980’s to dig for Gold in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia. McConaughey is fully committed to his role, transforming himself once again, both physically and mentally. I’d call the…
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