9 years ago
Theatrical (10 posts found)
Coming to a theater near you
“Planes: Fire and Rescue” Crashes And Burns In Slightly Less Fiery Fashion Than Its Predecessor
The primal, terrifying, and damaging power of fire is no stranger to Disney animation. It's not difficult to remember the scene where Bambi's mom is killed by an unseen hunter, but Bambi climaxes with a massive fire that lays waste to the forest that was once ...
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“Alive Inside” Beautifully Underscores The Power of Music
No film I’ve seen better underlines the transcendental power and mysticism that music has over human emotions than Alive Inside, filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett’s devoutly moving and often quite beautiful-looking documentary spotlighting a one-man crusade ca...
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“Among Ravens” Is For The Birds
Early on in Among Ravens, directors Russell Friedenberg and Randy Redroad stage a dinner gathering between the film's leads, a circle of friends meeting up to celebrate Independence Day near San Francisco. Before too much time passes into their revelry, they'r...
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“And So It Goes” Nowhere Of Interest
Once upon a time, Rob Reiner made good movies. Scratch that: he made great movies. Thirty years ago, he made This Is Spinal Tap in his very first outing as a director. Two years after that, he made Stand By Me. A year after that, he made The Princess Bride. An...
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“Video Games: The Movie” Presses All the Wrong Buttons
It takes a certain mix of hubris and willful ignorance to begin a documentary about video games with a quote from Gandhi. The bluntly titled Video Games: The Movie, after an introductory montage of gameplay footage (one of the many that pads the film), transit...
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“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” A Socially Conscious But Slightly Trivial Blockbuster
Following Tim Burton’s widely disliked 2001 remake of the original Planet of the Apes (1968), no one really expected much from Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 addition to the franchise, titled Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Yet, to almost consensual delight, Wyatt’s film...
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A Conversation On “Land Ho!”
Editor's note: The following is a conversation on "Land Ho" between two of our Boston film critics, Sean Burns and Jake Mulligan. Please enjoy this not-so-standard form of criticism.
Jake Mulligan: We’re here to talk about Land Ho! today, which should ...
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“Boyhood”: Me, You, and Everyone We Know and Love
This tweet from Mark Cousins recently popped up on my Facebook feed: “I almost never re-watch films, but I want to see Richard Linklater's Boyhood every year of my life." The Scottish director was not the first in the movie's unanimous choir of praisers; he si...
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“Closed Curtain” Marks A Harrowing Return for Jafar Panahi
Note: This review was originally published during AFI Fest last year.
Anyone who criticizes Jafar Panahi for retreading themes in his work at this juncture of his career is kind of an asshole. The man is under the thumb of a dictatorship and forbidden from ...
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“Life Itself”: Portrait Of A Film Critic
"He's a nice guy. But he's not that nice." This thought is presented to us early on in Life Itself, Steve James' loving, peering documentary about the life, times, and passing of Roger Ebert. Over the course of 2 hours, James takes it upon himself to explore t...
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