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Latest The Archive
The Grinch (2018)
D r. Seuss' evergreen opus about an evergreen grouch was not a story that cried out to be remade.  The 60s Christmas cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones and guided by Boris Karloff's grinning baritone, has long since qualified as timeless.  Ron Howard and Jim Carrey went live-action, a move that only underlined how well-enough should…
November 10, 20180Comments
Latest The Archive
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
T he first fifteen minutes of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms spark with real imagination and wonder:  Long-ago London is vividly recreated, with snowflakes flitting soundlessly to the cobblestones.  Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite teases on the soundtrack during an elegant dance scene, replete with billowing ballgowns and Morgan Freeman handing out enchanted presents, and....damn it, Christmas is…
November 7, 20181Comment
Latest The Archive
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
I t's telling that Freddie Mercury chose to pepper his mansion with cats, maybe because their personality traits mirrored his own:  As a man, Mercury was proud, unapologetically high-strung, and ferociously independent.  As a rock god, he burned onstage like an incandescent singularity, his shimmering voice serving as a conduit for Queen's pounding arena anthems.…
November 4, 20181Comment
Latest The Archive
Mid90s (2018)
C hildren of the mid-90s lived on the edge of a vanishing frontier, when the Internet was still a novelty and before social media gave us the blessing and curse of instant connection.  The opening scenes of Mid90s, Jonah Hill's assured directorial debut, draw a warm bath of nostalgia and invite us to soak in a…
October 31, 20181Comment
Latest The Archive
The Old Man and the Gun (2018)
D uring the Renaissance, the Stradivari family made stringed instruments with such phenomenal craftsmanship that their perfection cannot be reproduced with modern technology. Likewise, I think movie star charisma is a strange, mystical quality--easy to appreciate, impossible to replicate.  Take Robert Redford in The Old Man and the Gun.  His performance as an aging bank robber…
October 31, 20181Comment
Latest The Archive
Hunter Killer (2018)
M y high school humanities teacher was an adorably quirky woman who had a saying:  "The only new invention of the 20th Century was artificial snow.  Everything else was done before."  I'm not sure how well that statement holds up to scrutiny, but I do enjoy the sentiment behind it.  If what's past is truly…
October 27, 20180Comments
Greatest
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
B obby Dupea's life pinballs from one meaningless day to the next, powered by one-night stands and pints of plastic sour mash.  He carouses with rowdy shitkickers and toils in menial jobs until the boredom and wanderlust overwhelm him.  Bobby is loosely tethered to reality by a curdled relationship with a hee-haw diner waitress, Rayette…
October 25, 20180Comments
Latest The Archive
The Hate U Give (2018)
W hen it comes to depicting teenagers, Hollywood generally puts its characters in two cheap, lazy categories:  You have your vacuous, horny drunks on one hand, and drooling, dorky shut-ins on the other.  Most teen movies have neither the patience nor the bravery to show complex, intelligent people fumbling through the fog of young adulthood,…
October 25, 20181Comment
Laughable
Batman and Robin (1997)
A s I suffered through the wretchedness of rewatching Batman and Robin, a visual metaphor popped in my head:  The grainy footage of man's first failed attempts at flight.  You've probably seen the montages before, where intrepid young men with twiddly mustaches and bowler hats mount winged bicycles and half-assed gyrocopters--mechanical ostriches destined to go…
October 22, 20180Comments

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