AltWeeklies Wire
Reece Witherspoon Stumbles — Cheryl Strayed, and So Did This Movie
“Wild” is an unsatisfying self-help drama that exposes the limitations of Reece Witherspoon’s range.
What Becomes an Enigma Most? Benedict Cumberbatch Transforms Into Alan Turing
Genius mathematician Alan Turning is revealed as the father of the modern computer, an unsung British hero of World War II, and as a lonely victim of Britain’s Draconian punishment of gays, in this well-rounded biopic about the man who broke the Nazi’s cryptographic machine — the “Enigma.”
Neo-Western: Tommy Lee Jones Breaks Some Eggs
Of the handful of directors ready, willing, and able to make a Western that’s worth a damn, Tommy Lee Jones runs neck and neck with Clint Eastwood.
Canned Heat: A World War II Tank Story
Writer/director David Ayer’s World War II drama is a gritty European-styled coming-of-age picture that reminds us how much the nature of war has changed in the past 65 years, and yet how much it remains the same.
An Incomplete Investigation: Gary Webb’s Story Gets Short Shrift
Investigative journalism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It never was.
Tags: KILL THE MESSENGER, Michael Cuesta
Undone by Broad Strokes: Historic LGBT Battle in the UK Goes Soft
All attempts fail at forcing a by-the-numbers narrative template on a fact-based story about unlikely bedfellows uniting against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's mid '80s reign of anti-union and anti-gay rhetoric and public policies.
Mixing Menus: Overdo Foodie Movie Arrives With the Hallström Seal
The foodie-romance genre has been oddly absent from American cinema lately. It’s been seven long years since “Ratatouille” (2007) reminded audiences about their taste buds.
Prolific But Redundant — Woody’s Same Old Song and Dance
Woody Allen has mastered the art of making the same trivial film over and over again.
Crossed Thumbs: Steve James’s Flawed Roger Ebert Documentary
Documentarian Steve James — the filmmaker responsible for “Hoop Dreams,” one of the 20th century’s most significant additions to the genre — arrived at his lauded film-critic subject both too early and late to properly tell the story of a man whose prickly personality remains guarded.
Bromancing With Guns Out: Hollywood Gutter Spits Up Another Load of Debris
Everything about the concept of a “Jump Street” comedy franchise reeks of Hollywood’s perpetual endeavor to repackage a formula and call it a movie. 2014 has been an abysmal year for Hollywood movies — bottom-line grosses notwithstanding — and the near future looks just as bleak.
Time-Warped Nightmare Profusion: Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt Gets Stuck
All high-concept, but affording only minimal entertainment reward by way of its stale ghost-in-the-machine storyline, “Edge of Tomorrow” is the “Groundhog Day” of sci-fi movies.
Pure Cinema: Alejandro Jodorowsky Returns
After a 23 year hiatus from making feature films — his last was “The Rainbow Thief,” a work-for-hire film from 1990 starring Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif that he disowned after it was completed — Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky makes a striking return to filmmaking.
Merchant Ivory Present: Amma Asante Breaks Through
However fated to be inexorably linked to “12 Years a Slave” — by mere virtue of its slave-related subplot — “Belle” is an accomplished period drama firmly in line with the top-drawer production values and exquisite performances found in Merchant Ivory’s celebrated films.
Tags: Belle, Amma Asante
D.O.A. —COLE SMITHEY'S CLASSIC CINEMA
[VIDEO ESSAY] Cinema doesn't get much more tightly wound than the anxious premise for Rudolph Maté’s film noir standard-bearer.
Cobwebs: Redundant Spider-Man Franchise Dangles By a Thread
Even the nerdiest members of that long-dead-gone cultural movement known as fanboys will admit that rebooting Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” is/was a mistake.
