If we posit that a great film is both cinematography and story, EVEREST is not great as it does extremely well in the first area but fares poorly in the second. Obviously, Everest, the mountain, summit of the world, films magnificently. It is mighty, spectacular, awe-inspiring, frightening. It is both threatening and irresistible. Irresistible to the multitude striving to climb to the top or ... more >
ARCHIVES
EVEREST
Because it's there
Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin and Jason Clark
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur
SICARIO
"Sicario" means "hit man" in Spanish
Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Every Cannes Festival (and so, every festival) needs a good shoot-em-up movie. We got ours this year with SICARIO, starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, and Josh Brolin in the supporting role. SICARIO's at-times lack of depth and the expeditious nature of certain plot twists make this solid revenge drama imperfect. But an extraordinary lensmanship by Roger Deakins and ominous, ... more >
Inherent vice
Based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon
Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin and Kathleen Waterston
Directed by P.T. Anderson
In college I wrote a paper on the subversion of the detective novel in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I got an A, although the paper received its highest compliment in 2009. That’s when Pynchon finally lived up to my astonishing insight and published a detective novel, “Inherent vice.” This survey of Los Angeles weirdness circa 1970 is brought to the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson. The ... more >
Men in Black 3
A very franchisey kind of franchise
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
“Men in Black 3” is a paycheck movie for everyone involved, except the audience, who again get another middling, phoned-in sequel looking to drain their wallets with its average 3-D-ness. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones again return as agents J and K, except Jones much more briefly. His Agent K has been extinguished, all part of a plan by alien baddie Boris the Animal (the always-funny Jemaine ... more >
True grit
The new Coen Bros is here
Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld
Directed by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
She arrived in Fort Smith with two long braids, her father dead in the street, bent on revenge and calling it justice. All of fourteen, she carried the aura of a professional. She would quote the law. She would spook old men. She would hire the marshall least likely to take the man alive. She would look like Judy Garland and act with the iron, or the “sand,” or the “True Grit” of Cate ... more >
Jonah Hex
Revenge can get ugly, people
Josh Brolin and Megan Fox
Directed by Jimmy Hayward
The comic book is to this age what shoot'em up Westerns were to an older time: an outlet for children’s heroic fantasies. So perhaps Jonah Hex, a combination of the two, was inevitable. This DC Comics Western slyly refers to this fact, as a Frontier father watches his son read an illustrated Western storybook by candlelight. The father tells him it isn’t highest literary material. He can feel ... more >