8 years ago
Theatrical (10 posts found)
Coming to a theater near you
“Grandma” Is A Perfectly Nice Vehicle for Lily Tomlin
It’s been 27 years since Lily Tomlin last had a leading role in a film. Let’s not do that again, okay? In Grandma, the actress both embraces and subtly toys with the archetype of the irascible senior citizen. Her character, Ellie Reid, is liable to brusquely i...
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“American Ultra”, Like A Stoner, Has Trouble Focusing
The trouble with Mike Howell, the ambition-deficient convenience store clerk that Jesse Eisenberg plays in the middling American Ultra, is that he keeps receiving bad news while high. Bad news—like, say, the news that the United States government has sent high...
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“Station to Station” Is A Half-Assed and Artificial Hodgepodge
Station to Station has a reasonably intriguing premise: A train travels from New York to San Francisco, and over the 24 days this takes, various artists and musicians are brought aboard to contribute their thoughts on, and expressions of, creativity. Beck, Jac...
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“Youth” Is A Stripped-Down, Minimalist Thriller
Brothers Shaul (Eitan Cunio) and Yaki (David Cunio) Cooper are as close as two siblings can be: They watch movies together, they pee together, and, when their family’s financial chips are down, they kidnap and ransom people together. Israeli filmmaker Tom Shov...
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“Straight Outta Compton” Is Overstuffed And Exhilarating At The Same Time
In one scene, deep in the overstuffed second act of F. Gary Gray’s ambitious N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, Ice Cube (played by O’Shea Jackson Jr., the real-life fruit of Mr. Cube’s loins) goes to settle a dispute with his manager. The overcooked noodle...
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“Prince” Is A Buoyant and Charming Debut
In Holland, first you get the energy drink, then you get the purple Lamborghini, then you get the women—or so it goes in Sam de Jong’s buoyant and charming debut Prince, a familiar coming-of-age scenario energized via the fresh lens of the 28-year-old Dutch mu...
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“Fort Tilden” Is As Dyspeptic And Amusing As Its Leads Are Dim
A dyspeptic riff on the exhaustingly over-documented travails of today’s rudderless post-collegiate folks belatedly coming of age in gentrified Brooklyn, the debut feature from writer-directors Sarah Violet-Bliss and Charles Rogers takes an amusingly dim view ...
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“Mistress America” Is Fresh, Original, and Marvelous
In Mistress America, writers Noah Baumbach, who also directs, and Greta Gerwig, who also stars, have harmonized their distinct voices into something marvelous. Millennial communication patterns—a constant, rapid shuffle between angst, oversharing, self-mytholo...
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Persona of Interest: “Tom at the Farm”
In a tense scene in writer-director Xavier Dolan’s Tom at the Farm, the hulking Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), his muscular form not hidden by his suit, pushes his deceased brother’s diminutive boyfriend Tom (Dolan), to the corner of a bathroom stall. They ar...
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“Final Girl” Has A Crippling Lack of Imagination
Have you ever sat through a movie so ponderous and pointless that you felt the minutes ticking by as your patience slowly dwindled to zero? That’s more or less the experience of watching Tyler Shields’ immeasurably boring Final Girl, a film injudiciously stitc...
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