CAT PERSON: It seems to be necessary to establish one’s bona fides (or lack thereof) before commenting on Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person, so I’ll note that I’ve never read Kristen Roupenian’s celebrated New Yorker short story. I’m given to understand, however, that the entire third act of Michelle Ashford’s adaptation is an add-on, which […]
THE WOMAN KING (Tri-Star/Sony – Sept. 16): Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King feels something like what would happen if the Themyscira Island Amazonian sequences of Wonder Woman were feature length. Dana Stevens’ script (from a story by the actress/producer Maria Bello) is set in the 19th-century African kingdom of Dahomey, which is ruled by […]
THE COUNSELOR: Not Even For Free – A Deluxe Pedigree, But Only Cut-Rate Nihilism The first “uh-oh” moment in THE COUNSELOR comes early, perhaps 10 minutes in. We’ve barely been introduced to Reiner (Javier Bardem, genially dissolute, his hair spiky this time) and his lover Malkina (Cameron Diaz, speaking with an on-again, off-again sultry […]
Watch it at home. The deadliest weapon unleashed in BATTLE LOS ANGELES is its barrage of war-movie cliches. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but there’s this rag-tag group of Marines, led by a hard-bitten veteran, that has to go into enemy territory to rescue some civilians before friendly forces bomb the […]
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL: Worth A Ticket – A Different Kind of Dream Team Bear with me here. On Friday, Fox Searchlight will throw THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL directly into the path of the mega-buster that is The Avengers. (Well, in 27 big-city theatres, anyway.) It’s tempting, of course, […]
FOOTLOOSE: Watch It At Home – Faithfully Reproduces the Original For Good and Bad 1980s week at the multiplex continues with a remake of FOOTLOOSE, a trip back to the territory of Herbert Ross’s 1984 hit. (Financially, by the way, there was no contest between the 1980s versions of this weekend’s entries: the […]
> THE CHANGE UP – Watch It At Home: Cliches with Dirty Words Are Still Cliches There have been plenty of R-rated comedies this summer–a bumper crop, really–but none more fully committed to raunch than THE CHANGE-UP. The script by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (they wrote The Hangover, but also Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) […]
KNIVES OUT (Lionsgate – November 27): Rian Johnson’s delectable reinvention of the old-fashioned puzzle whodunnit wears its convoluted plotting on its sleeve, weaving and circling about so that when you think you know what’s going on, he can bang his trap shut. Johnson isn’t shy about his influences here. The murder victim, Harlan Thrombrey […]