Now In Theaters
The House with a Clock in Its Walls
Horror director Eli Roth, playing nice here with a family film, channels the early '80s classics (E.T., The Goonies) to tell a story of another outcast kid coming to terms with a new situation. Themes champion individuality, families come in all shapes and sizes, and a most intriguing idea about coping with tragedy - move forward or go back?
Comedy/Family/Fantasy - 104 Minutes
Horror director Eli Roth, playing nice here with a family film, channels the early '80s classics (E.T., The Goonies) to tell a story of another outcast kid coming to terms with a new situation. Themes champion individuality, families come in all shapes and sizes, and a most intriguing idea about coping with tragedy - move forward or go back?
Comedy/Family/Fantasy - 104 Minutes
Blaze
Blaze feels like an Ethan Hawke passion project, the kind where a filmmaker hears about a legend, digs in to find out more, and discovers a movie underneath it. He’s right. Blaze’s story and Ben Dickey are made for the camera and Hawke’s country-western opera offers a realistic slice of Americana by a guy who appears to respect it, not a poseur intent on exploitation.
Biography/Drama/Music - 127 Minutes
Blaze feels like an Ethan Hawke passion project, the kind where a filmmaker hears about a legend, digs in to find out more, and discovers a movie underneath it. He’s right. Blaze’s story and Ben Dickey are made for the camera and Hawke’s country-western opera offers a realistic slice of Americana by a guy who appears to respect it, not a poseur intent on exploitation.
Biography/Drama/Music - 127 Minutes
The Predator
Shane Black exchanges Ahhnold, suspense, and horror for an embarrassing mess. The goofy family drama, the busload of psych cases that could, and Olivia Munn as an ass-kicking evolutionary biologist may make you feel shame for ever liking the original.
Action/Adventure/Horror - 107 Minutes
Shane Black exchanges Ahhnold, suspense, and horror for an embarrassing mess. The goofy family drama, the busload of psych cases that could, and Olivia Munn as an ass-kicking evolutionary biologist may make you feel shame for ever liking the original.
Action/Adventure/Horror - 107 Minutes
A Simple Favor
Imagine Doris Day and Marlene Dietrich day-drinking, confiding secrets, and generating conspiracy theories. Sounds pretty intriguing right? If only given the chance.
Comedy/Crime/Drama - 117 Minutes
Imagine Doris Day and Marlene Dietrich day-drinking, confiding secrets, and generating conspiracy theories. Sounds pretty intriguing right? If only given the chance.
Comedy/Crime/Drama - 117 Minutes
Peppermint
Jennifer Garner does Death Wish better than Bruce Willis, but Peppermint offers nothing new to the genre other than a gender switch.
Action/Drama/Thriller - 102 Minutes
Jennifer Garner does Death Wish better than Bruce Willis, but Peppermint offers nothing new to the genre other than a gender switch.
Action/Drama/Thriller - 102 Minutes
Kin
At one point, James Franco whips it out and pisses all over a gas station floor - that about sums up Kin. A movie about a firearm fetish masquerading as an indie road trip drama; the longest 102 minutes of my life.
Action/Sci-Fi - 102 Minutes
At one point, James Franco whips it out and pisses all over a gas station floor - that about sums up Kin. A movie about a firearm fetish masquerading as an indie road trip drama; the longest 102 minutes of my life.
Action/Sci-Fi - 102 Minutes
Operation Finale
Director Chris Weitz wants the mood to hover toward intrigue rather than despair. A story about Adolf Eichmann’s World War II atrocities can easily make the audience choke up and douse us in the heaviest of drama. Not so here, Weitz includes jokes and deliberate mood lighteners creating a precarious levity to avoid offering up a weeper.
Biography/Drama/History - 122 Minutes
Director Chris Weitz wants the mood to hover toward intrigue rather than despair. A story about Adolf Eichmann’s World War II atrocities can easily make the audience choke up and douse us in the heaviest of drama. Not so here, Weitz includes jokes and deliberate mood lighteners creating a precarious levity to avoid offering up a weeper.
Biography/Drama/History - 122 Minutes
The Happytime Murders
Some ideas are better left on the bar napkin they were dreamed up on over cheap beer. Brian Henson saw Sausage Party, thought he could use his Muppets to make a quick buck with raunch like that, but forgot about the script. Way to go 2018 - thanks for ruining Muppets too.
Action/Comedy/Crime - 91 Minutes
Some ideas are better left on the bar napkin they were dreamed up on over cheap beer. Brian Henson saw Sausage Party, thought he could use his Muppets to make a quick buck with raunch like that, but forgot about the script. Way to go 2018 - thanks for ruining Muppets too.
Action/Comedy/Crime - 91 Minutes
Skate Kitchen
Skate Kitchen works because of the believable non-professional actors playing versions of themselves and how Crystal Moselle leans back and lets the film breathe through extended skating montages to break up the more common plot line. I still do not understand the desire to board and skate culture as a whole, but Moselle made me appreciate it.
Drama - 106 Minutes
Skate Kitchen works because of the believable non-professional actors playing versions of themselves and how Crystal Moselle leans back and lets the film breathe through extended skating montages to break up the more common plot line. I still do not understand the desire to board and skate culture as a whole, but Moselle made me appreciate it.
Drama - 106 Minutes
Support the Girls
Andrew Bujalski pokes at a unique slice of Americana - the breastaurant. Showing real girls with real problems and a real humanity, the film screws comedic holes into the modern American value of young girls paid to flaunt, flirt, and flatter.
Comedy - 90 Minutes
Andrew Bujalski pokes at a unique slice of Americana - the breastaurant. Showing real girls with real problems and a real humanity, the film screws comedic holes into the modern American value of young girls paid to flaunt, flirt, and flatter.
Comedy - 90 Minutes
Mile 22
The script is a mess, the plot is near indecipherable, and the editing may be some of the worst in recent memory; however, my pulse raced. I was tense. Mile 22 has no idea what it wants to be, but it may physically impact the audience enough for them to not notice.
Action/Thriller - 95 Minutes
The script is a mess, the plot is near indecipherable, and the editing may be some of the worst in recent memory; however, my pulse raced. I was tense. Mile 22 has no idea what it wants to be, but it may physically impact the audience enough for them to not notice.
Action/Thriller - 95 Minutes
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Modernizing Shakespeare is a worthy effort and in the right hands can reinvent how you see the play (Romeo + Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing), but the attempt can also fall on its face. There is promise in the idea of contemporary Hollywood as Athens, but the haphazard translation produces far too many “WTF”s to succeed as a coherent whole.
Comedy/Fantasy - 104 Minutes
Modernizing Shakespeare is a worthy effort and in the right hands can reinvent how you see the play (Romeo + Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing), but the attempt can also fall on its face. There is promise in the idea of contemporary Hollywood as Athens, but the haphazard translation produces far too many “WTF”s to succeed as a coherent whole.
Comedy/Fantasy - 104 Minutes
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
Not so much a who's who of salacious Golden Age details, but a study of the pimp who outlived them all. Welcome the curtain opening and reminder there are not a sect of famous people better than you out there, they just have full-time publicists telling you they are.
Documentary - 98 Minutes
Not so much a who's who of salacious Golden Age details, but a study of the pimp who outlived them all. Welcome the curtain opening and reminder there are not a sect of famous people better than you out there, they just have full-time publicists telling you they are.
Documentary - 98 Minutes
The Meg
More SyFy than Spielberg, The Meg will quench the thirst of those seeking shallow shark vs. human mini-bites - but those seeking depth and actual meat to chew on will be left hungry.
Action/Horror/Sci-Fi - 113 Minutes
More SyFy than Spielberg, The Meg will quench the thirst of those seeking shallow shark vs. human mini-bites - but those seeking depth and actual meat to chew on will be left hungry.
Action/Horror/Sci-Fi - 113 Minutes
Christopher Robin
Another story set in the Hundred Acre Wood targets tear ducts through melancholy and regret. Disney advertises slapstick mayhem, but delivers a pack of neuroses, poor parenting, and innocence lost.
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 104 Minutes
Another story set in the Hundred Acre Wood targets tear ducts through melancholy and regret. Disney advertises slapstick mayhem, but delivers a pack of neuroses, poor parenting, and innocence lost.
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 104 Minutes
The Spy Who Dumped Me
Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel aims to resurrect the familiar plot frame of laughs through near-death experiences and fish out of water naiveté and succeeds in doing exactly that for the film’s first half before the tidal wave regrettably loses momentum and direction resulting in a disappointing muddle.
Action/Comedy - 116 min
Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel aims to resurrect the familiar plot frame of laughs through near-death experiences and fish out of water naiveté and succeeds in doing exactly that for the film’s first half before the tidal wave regrettably loses momentum and direction resulting in a disappointing muddle.
Action/Comedy - 116 min
Puzzle
Kelly Macdonald makes an already stellar script soar to charming, melancholic, and hopeful heights. Agnes is a character whose earnest solitude will earn your trust and sympathy in this coming of age story for a 40-something year-old woman.
Drama - 103 min
Kelly Macdonald makes an already stellar script soar to charming, melancholic, and hopeful heights. Agnes is a character whose earnest solitude will earn your trust and sympathy in this coming of age story for a 40-something year-old woman.
Drama - 103 min
Now On DVD
