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Sicario is the moral-grey-zone crime drama for those of us who felt burned by season 2 of True Detective. There are few heroes and even fewer clearly defined villains in this taught, gruesome, and disquieting narco-thriller written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners). Unlike other films that posit the need to go to extremes to win … Continue reading
James “Whitey” Bulger was a real-life bogeyman in Boston during the 1970s and ’80s. A vicious, possible psychotic, and seemingly untouchable criminal kingpin, his name commanded varying degrees of fear and grudging respect among cops and crooks alike. It is ostensibly an ensemble flick, though so much has been made of Johnny Depp’s performance and appearance … Continue reading
Rupert Goold’s adaptation of Mike Finkel’s true crime novel/memoir, True Story is tepid that serves as a sobering reminder that while truth can be stranger than fiction, that’s not enough to make it interesting. At its core it is a genuinely bromance, but that conceit is soft-pedaled and ignored in favor of anemic characterization. Jonah Hill … Continue reading
Maybe it’s best that Liam Neeson has declared his impending retirement from action movies. Some of them have been damn fine B-grade cinema — namely the cult classic Taken and oft overlooked The Grey — but the lion’s share are dull, repetitious, and formulaic. Case in point: Run All Night. It has a good gimmick and noir … Continue reading
Inherent Vice is the first movie based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon. Whether or not there will be another any time soon is anyone’s guess. Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation (approved by Pynchon himself) is a rambling and largely incoherent tale. It’s supposed to be; its source was a rambling, convoluted soft-boiled detective tale, and Anderson’s … Continue reading
A messy but intriguing and enjoyably warped slice of modern film noir as only Los Angeles can flavor it, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler isn’t quite the searing indictment of the “if it bleeds, it leads” TV news ethos, but it is one hell of a character study of a video journalist as high-functioning sociopath. That’s largely … Continue reading
Love is a many-splintered thing in Gone Girl, a gleefully snarky satire disguised as a thriller directed by David Fincher and adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own best-selling novel. It’s likely to do for prenuptial agreements what The Bucket List did for, well, bucket lists. This is one of those instances of a review having … Continue reading
It’s been nearly a decade since Robert Rodriguez’s stylish adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City comic book series shook up the megaplexes with a darkly humorous brand of pseudo-noir. Unfortunately, the long-awaited sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill doesn’t prove to be worth the wait. Whereas the first film was kitschy, ambitious schlock, its sequel is a … Continue reading
A poor man’s The Exorcist grafted to a by-the-numbers police procedural, Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us from Evil gets more mileage from its hybrid premise than one would expect, by it quickly goes adrift in before coming to rest with an anti-climactic thud of a conclusion. The story is based on the book Beware the Night … Continue reading
One of the most original, suspenseful, and surprising indies in the past few years, writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin is a mesmerizing exercise in style and character study. Granted, that last bit is enough to make many a movie-goers’ sphincters clinch with dread of ponderous, talky self-indulgence, oblique references to obscure film movements, and/or overblown visual flourishes; … Continue reading
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