Here’s another grasping summertime slog that promisingly pairs two popular actresses and then puts them through nonsensical material.
Matt Brunson
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Review: The Promise
The trio dominating this picture is a lackluster one, with Oscar Isaac, Christian Bale and Charlotte Le Bon unable to bring much dimension to their threadbare characters
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Review: Fate of The Furious
The Fate of the Furious wallows in inanities with about the same frequency as it delivers excitement, and, like the other two films that followed the series-best Fast Five, it largely succeeds as a breezy and engaging lark.
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Review: Going In Style
The delicate balance between humor and pathos that informed the original has been replaced with broader gags and more blatantly manufactured sentiment.
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Review: The Zookeeper’s Wife
The Zookeeper’s Wife is rated PG-13, but don’t be fooled into thinking that designation means the movie is two hours of Chastain pulling a Doctor Dolittle and talking to the animals while blissfully unaware of the atrocities surrounding her.
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Review: Ghost in the Shell
For those willing to look beneath its surface dazzle, Ghost in the Shell proves to be an unexpectedly complex and surprisingly humanistic endeavor.
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Review: Wilson
Sentiment quickly takes the place of cynicism, and, despite the occasional flash of brutal wit, the film settles into a well-worn groove of indie preciousness.
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Review: Beauty and the Beast
The plot remains fundamentally unchanged from the ’91 model, and the narrative diversions that have been added along the way are acceptable and sometimes even manage to enhance particular points from its predecessor.
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Review: Logan
The film is crucially missing a worthy villain of note – and when the scripters run out of ideas, they paraphrase Stephen Sondheim and elect to send in the clones. This latter decision renders the action sequences even more rote and less interesting.
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Review: A United Kingdom
As is often the case with historical sagas, the picture relegates lots of fascinating material into a few blocks of text at the end, giving short shrift to the subsequent accomplishments of two people who refused to be defined merely by their physical appearances.
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Review: John Wick Chapter 2
Keanu Reeves is again suitably taciturn as the former assassin who, just when he thought he was out, gets pulled back in, and the criminal world created for the first picture — a landscape in which there exists neutral-zone hotels in which no blood may be spilled – retains its unique appeal.
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Review: Fifty Shades Darker
The major liabilities of the first picture have been neatly carried over into this latest endeavor, beginning with the fact that the general prudishness permeating throughout American society makes it impossible for Hollywood to produce an honest, provocative or explicit film about S-E-X and have it receive an R rating.