The Idea of You Fails to Sell its Steamy Romance
Ignorance is one of the most enduring ingredients in the celebrity fan fiction recipe. Sure, plenty of Wattpad users have dreamed about locking eyes with their favorite member of One Direction at a concert, tempting him to choose them out of thousands of devoted fans. Often, though, people penning celebrity fanfic bestow their leading ladies…
Action and Romance Make a Winning Combination in The Fall Guy
The Fall Guy is the kind of four-quadrant movie that’s all too rare nowadays. On one hand, it is an action film full of chases, explosions, and stunts. On the other, it is a clever romantic comedy that relies on the sheer charisma of its likable leads. Director David Leitch and screenwriter Drew Pearce may…
Spend May Day at the Movies With the DC Labor FilmFest
Before heading into the theater to watch Mike Judge’s 1999 cubicle-set comedy Office Space, which was screening as part of the 2016 Dublin Workers Film Festival, a spirited ticket holder walked up to longtime labor organizer Chris Garlock and declared: “I feckin’ hate unions.” As executive director of the Labor Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated…
Folie a trois: Challengers Is Less Than the Sum of Its Parts, But What Parts!
Nonlinear storytelling can be a clever method of making us care about movie characters more than we ought. We’re enthralled by the sociopathic killers, crooks, pushers, and palookas who populate Pulp Fiction, The Limey, and Memento. We empathize with the amoral, oblivious coders of The Social Network. And in Challengers, an all’s-fair-in-love-and-tennis melodrama from Call…
Code Breaker: 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder Was Designed to Push Boundaries
You need only get a few seconds into Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before you realize it’s not the film you thought it would be. When you hear the words “Jimmy Stewart” and “courtroom drama” in short succession in the description, you expect a Capraesque affirmation of the American justice system. You assume the opening…
Cool Again? This Year’s Filmfest DC Offers a Promising Slate for Film Buffs
Seasoned D.C. moviegoers remember when Filmfest DC, could be depended on for a surprise or two. The highlights may vary, but this was a festival that—in its heyday some 30 years ago—was the only place one could see works such as the Hanif Kureishi miniseries The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) or Mani Ratnam’s dazzling musical…
The People’s Joker Might Be the Last Great Superhero Film
Can’t recall the last good superhero movie you saw? Vera Drew is here to change that with an original story that manages to be a funny, sensitive, and profane story of identity.
The Beast Plays With Time to Suggest Our Patterns Are a Kind of Fate
What would it mean to erase your generational trauma? You would inherit less pain from your ancestors, leaving you unencumbered by their hardships. Perhaps that would mean your life is easier, more tranquil. The trade-off, however, might be a total or partial erasure of who you are. Your predecessors, just like your environment and your…
Civil War is an Irresponsible Tour De Force
Any cinephile old enough to go to the movies habitually in 1996 will remember the trailer for that year’s biggest hit, the fun-but-dumb-as-dirt UFO invasion throwback Independence Day. Its trailer ran before every movie I saw for half a year, culminating in a shot of the White House being vaporized by an alien death ray.…
Dawn of the Dead Gives You Something to Sink Your Teeth Into
BRAAAINS! It’s what zombies want, and what their films already have. It’s ironic really that horror movies about the mindless undead actually have the most on their mind. We have writer-director George A. Romero to thank for that. He pioneered the modern zombie film with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, a not-so-thinly veiled attack…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.