As a director, Jodie Foster has specialized in bringing unconventional scripts to clear-eyed life, with films such as Home for the Holidays and The Beaver achieving a fascinatingly honest messiness. This is not one of those times. Money Monster, Foster’s first movie in five years, is a pedantic, largely juiceless misfire of the sort that […]
Andrew Wright
Posted inMovies & TV
Not Even George Clooney Grinding Can Save Money Monster
Jodie Foster’s First Movie in Five Years Is Toothless and Pedantic
A satire about television that feels like it was made by the kind of people who claim they don’t watch TV.
Posted inVideo Games
Ratchet & Clank: PlayStation Redux
A Kids Movie That Fits in That Tier Just Below Pixar
A kids movie that fits in that tier just below Pixar.
Posted inPortland
Green Room Director Jeremy Saulnier: “I Really Curate Each Scene to Have the Most Impact”
“When you put people in extreme situations,” says Jeremy Saulnier, “it can be scary, or tragically pathetic, or even funny to watch them flail and try to acclimate.” Blue Ruin, Saulnier’s Kickstarter-aided 2013 calling card, managed to ring the cherries on all of the options above, fashioning a diabolically inventive revenge movie that repeatedly headed […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Green Room: Shot in Oregon. Intense as Hell.
Director Jeremy Saulnier: “I Really Curate Each Scene to Have the Most Impact”
“I really curate each scene to have the most impact,” says director Jeremy Saulnier.
Posted inMovies & TV
Midnight Special Is Jeff Nichols’ Great Tribute to Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter
Jeff Nichols is in the zone. With just a handful of films, the Little Rock, Arkansas, native has crafted his own busy little pocket of Southern Gothic, spilling over with feuding families (2007’s Shotgun Stories), ordinary people touched with terrible prophecy (2011’s Take Shelter), and the painful limits of self-aware mythologizing (2012’s Mud). Whatever the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Going Back to the ’80s with Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special
Friendly Reminder: Don’t Trust Kids with Weird Powers.
Friendly reminder: Don’t trust kids with weird powers.
Posted inMovies & TV
10 Cloverfield Lane Is One Hell of a Bunker Buster
Some movies let you know you’re in good hands with the very first shot. The latest mystery wrapped in an enigma from producer J.J. Abrams, 10 Cloverfield Lane takes an instantly fraught premise and never stops stripping the screws. Within its narrow self-imposed parameters, it’s just about perfect. Related to the original Cloverfield by mood […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Getting Trapped—and Thrilled—at 10 Cloverfield Lane
J.J. Abrams and Dan Trachtenberg Have Made One Hell of a Bunker Buster
J.J. Abrams and Dan Trachtenberg have made one hell of a bunker buster.
Posted inMovies & TV
London Has Fallen: Ugly Americanism at Its Best and/or Worst
LONDON HAS FALLEN “Say ‘mind the gap’ again, motherfucker. SAY IT AGAIN.” Even when judged on a generous B-movie curve, 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen counts as a whiff, with its base, Die Hard-ish pleasures and hilariously overqualified supporting cast (Morgan Freeman! Melissa Leo!) terminally undercut by shoddy technique. While London Has Fallen is a quantum […]
Posted inMovies & TV
London Has Fallen, and So Have Our Standards
In Which Gerard Butler Stabs Villains from Fuckheadistan.
In which Gerard Butler stabs villains from Fuckheadistan.
Posted inMovies & TV
The Slow, Creeping Horror of The Witch
“IN THE EARLY modern period,” begins Robert Eggers, writer and director of the deeply unsettling The Witch, “the real world and the fairy tale world were the same thing.” It’s an appropriately Once Upon a Time preamble for discussing the film, in which a devouter-than-thou family of New England Puritans venture past the outskirts of […]