Anderson orchestrates ambitious Battle Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another comes fully freighted with great expectations. Proclaimed by critics as the front runner for the Oscar for Best Picture, it seems preordained to deliver the director recognition from the Academy that’s long overdue. Yet, much like Martin Socrsese’s The Departed, this is far from […]
Film – Chuck Koplinski
Posted inFilm
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey takes detour, Lily James great in Swiped
Enchanting Journey ultimately sidetracked I approached Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey with a healthy amount of skepticism. With one foot in the real world and the other firmly planted in the fantastical, my guard was up for something that labored to be whimsical or a film that revolved solely around its gimmick. Imagine my […]
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High and Low overstays its welcome, star power makes Murder Club
Lee, Washington tackle the great divide in Highest Using the Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low as a starting point, Spike Lee delivers a searing examination of the ever-expanding class divide in Highest 2 Lowest, his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington. Like so many of the director’s films, he casts a wide net regarding the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fate a tired, redundant sequel
It’s time to put this to rest. Without question, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a seminal piece of science fiction, a film that, much like many of its characters, has transcended time to become a part of our pop culture lexicon. Its dire warnings about technology taking over our lives has unfortunately proved prescient, while […]
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Emmerich’s Midway a surprisingly sincere effort
Over the course of four days in June 1942, a vastly outnumbered American naval force pulled off a successful surprise attack on the Japanese Navy at a remote atoll known as Midway. Still smarting from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy marshaled their battered forces and set out to check the […]
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Norton can’t get out of his own way in Brooklyn
Passion projects are a difficult thing in that they often lack perspective. Case in point: Edward Norton’s adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn, a project the actor has reportedly been trying to bring to the screen for nearly two decades. You have to admire his tenacity and bravado concerning the project as he’s not […]
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Gemini Man: New age visuals clash with old-school script
While watching any movie, viewers should never be conscious of the process that goes into its making. No matter what the film, an illusion of reality – whatever “reality” said production has adopted – should be established and maintained throughout. Nary a thought should be given as to how an effect has been achieved or […]
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Thoughtful, flawed Joker a cry for mental health reform
Todd Phillips’ Joker arrives in theaters having already created a wave of protests and social media outrage that the titular character would be proud of. Some critics who have seen it are concerned that its content may incite violence, as the fear is that some may embrace the chaos the Crown Prince of Crime creates […]
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Ponderous Astra a worthy exercise
Is there more to James Grey’s Ad Astra than meets the eye? Or is there less? It’s something I’ve been turning over and over in my mind since seeing it a week ago. I suppose the fact that I am still thinking about it, when so many movies are forgotten by the time I get […]
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Downton a delight for true fans
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I have never seen a single episode of the hit PBS series “Downton Abbey.” I don’t know a Crawley from a Talbot and whether the show has been on two seasons or six, I couldn’t tell you. I do know that everyone loves Maggie Smith […]
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Lazy screenwriting hampers It 2
Much like It, Andy Muschietti’s follow-up, Chapter 2, is a triumph of production design, a meticulously rendered, at times morbidly beautiful film that is never less than captivating to look at. Whether it be the make-up effects that bring its villainous clown Pennywise to life, the rundown, hovel-chic house where he resides or the elaborately […]
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Brittany a surprising, moving testament to self-reliance
The power in Paul Down Colaizzo’s Brittany Runs a Marathon comes from the fact that we so easily identify with the titular character, a young woman who isn’t living her life as much as floating through it. She makes no conscious choices where the direction of her life is concerned; she allows herself to be […]
