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Lizzie Review: Sympathy for the Devil

Deirdre Crimmins — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 14:00:53 +0000

Though the latest film based on the parent murderer and Fall River, Massachusetts native Lizzie Borden attempts to frame itself as a thriller, it’s a much more complicated and nuanced tale of death than the sensationalists will have you believe. Nearly everyone knows the story of Lizzie Borden, if not the song that goes along...

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‘Certain Women’ Review: Small Stories, Impressive Impact

Philip Brown — Fri, 19 May 2017 15:00:21 +0000

Short stories often suit feature film adaptation better than novels. In ‘Certain Women’, the perpetually underrated Kelly Reichardt (‘Wendy and Lucy’, ‘Meek’s Cutoff’) takes three achingly small and human short stories by Maile Meloy and weaves them together into a single feature that honors the voices of both the original author and the filmmaker. Laura...

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‘Personal Shopper’ Review: Artfully Empty, Persuasively Creepy

Philip Brown — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 16:00:01 +0000

Kristen Stewart’s commitment to following up her infamous run as the ‘Twilight’ heroine with an esoteric art house career continues in ‘Personal Shopper’. This time, she reunites with her ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ director for a ghost story that also wants to be about something deeper without ever committing to an intelligible subtext. Yes, finally,...

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‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Review: Heightened Realism, Stilted Drama

Philip Brown — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 16:00:55 +0000

‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ is a curious effort for Ang Lee. The director does some genuinely experimental visual work that can be rather brilliant. At the same time, the film’s script often can’t live up to the craft, despite the efforts of a uniformly strong cast. Ang Lee is without a doubt one of...

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TIFF Journal: ‘Personal Shopper’

Philip Brown — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 18:00:47 +0000

Ever wondered what it would look like if a French art house specialist decided to make a haunted house picture with the star of ‘Twilight’? Well, now you’ll kind of know. Following their acclaimed ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’, writer/director Olivier Assayas reteams with his unexpected muse Kristen Stewart for a bizarre ghost story as rooted...

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Weekend Roundtable: Worst Movie & TV Fake Accents

Josh Zyber — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:00:07 +0000

I haven’t watched ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ in years and don’t remember it clearly. Was Renée Zellweger’s fake British accent in that one as awful as it sounds in the trailers for this week’s belated sequel, or is she just woefully out of practice? With that as our first example, let’s look at some other embarrassing...

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‘Cafe Society’ Review: Another Year, Another Woody Allen Movie

Philip Brown — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 19:00:53 +0000

The presence of a new Woody Allen movie is a way of confirming the passage of time more reliable than your hair and/or waistline. They come annually, whether we like it or not. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Woody Allen himself likes it or not. It seems like a compulsion at this point, like...

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‘Equals’ Review: Actually, Less Than

Philip Brown — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 16:00:42 +0000

From the moment you see the identical white jumpsuits and bland expressions, it’s immediately clear what kind of movie ‘Equals’ will be. Unfortunately, there aren’t many surprises from that point on. The movie is pretty much a remake (or ripoff, depending on your point of view) of ‘THX 1138‘ with an added emo twist. It’s...

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‘American Ultra’ Review: The Stoner Supremacy

Philip Brown — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:00:07 +0000

The challenge in creating a cross-genre mashup is delivering a movie that manages to satisfy while going out of its way not to fall back on certain genre expectations. ‘American Ultra’ teeters on that very thin line throughout and comes out the other side reasonably unscathed. You can’t say the movie is perfect, but nor...

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‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ Review: 70% Chance of Artistic Pretension

Philip Brown — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 15:00:19 +0000

‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ debuted to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival last spring before touring the rest of the 2014 film festival circuit to suck up the few remaining critical accolades left. Yet the international release of the project was left dangling for almost a year, which seemed odd from the outside until I...

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‘Still Alice’ Review: A Movie-of-the-Week with a Little Moore

Philip Brown — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:00:57 +0000

It happens every year. A movie comes along that’s completely mediocre and undeserving of much thought beyond the fact that it features a strong performance from a beloved actor or actress. That’s all it takes to a get unwarranted mountains of praise and attention. This year, that movie is ‘Still Alice’, a capably dull made-for-TV...

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Blu-ray Highlights: Week of August 4th, 2013 – Oo-De-Lally, Oo-De-Lally, Golly What a Day

Josh Zyber — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 13:00:10 +0000

Now we’re getting somewhere. After an almost unbearably slow month of July, the Blu-ray release schedule picks up with a huge new slate of discs this week. True, most of them are for really bad movies, but guilty pleasures are still pleasures. New Releases Tom Cruise stars as WALL-E in the sci-fi epic ‘Oblivion‘, which...

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