I've reviewed films for more than 30 years. Current movie reviews of new theatrical releases and streaming films are added weekly to the Silver Screen Capture movie news site. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column.
Given the film’s depiction of the joys and promises of immigrating from Ireland to New York boroughs just six decades ago, John Crowley’s Brooklyn (B) should be required viewing for a few presidential aspirants. Saoirse Ronan carries the drama on her capable shoulders and shows her character mature right before our eyes; the actress is rather magnificent in coming-of-age mode. Her central character falls head over heels for a working-class Italian suitor (a charming Emory Cohen), and the film’s primary conflict involves this burgeoning love in The States versus the promise of a different life with another man in her homeland (Domhnall Gleeson in an underdeveloped role). The plot really stacks the deck given the mounting successes of life in America, but the overall journey is enjoyable as Ronan’s character pulls considerable empathy. The art direction and costuming are authentic and lush, and what could have devolved quickly into melodrama is lifted in Crowley’s skilled hands. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are women as peers and elders who want to hold our heroine down, and her ability to be resilient and push forward is inspiring.
It’s days of whine and poses as Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen trudges along to the prolonged conclusion of Francis Lawrence’s excruciating The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (D+). For a heroine who came on the scene so strong in the original film, it really was a long slog through three more movies to drain the character of any recognizable character whatsoever. After treading water and biding time for more than an hour, the film introduces an oil spill sequence and a slime-zombie battle to rattle the narrative out of complete somnolence. The plot to assassinate President Snow (Donald Sutherland) meanders and fizzles; the inexplicable Peeta versus Gale fauxmance wobbles into utter nonsense and the whole enterprise just teeters to the finale. Aimless in direction, bleak in set design and imagination and largely existent to squeeze more money out of the franchise, this sequel is notable for career-low wooden performances from Oscar winners Lawrence, Julianne Moore and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. For completists only, this part four is a complete bore.
The quartet of Boston Globe investigative journalists portrayed in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (A) are often speed-dining on vending machine snack crackers and black coffee, don’t always match their socks and constantly struggle with defective ballpoint pens. But in the year 2001 as major world news was erupting and traditional newspapers were fighting for their life in the digital era, this ragtag group of reporters cracks open one of the biggest scandals in our century about child abuse in the Catholic Church. Told with verve and urgency and impeccably acted, the film is a love letter to the importance of journalism and a crackling good story. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton are standouts as they plot out the impact of taking the long game and breaking a scoop. It’s an important work and one of the year’s most vital films.
David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis (C-) is the story of a real-life political strategist (Sandra Bullock) who gets her groove back through her work as a consultant on a contentious Bolivian election. The screenplay has a few pearls of wisdom and the story a few moments of insight, but the film’s whole sense of time and place feels vaguely artificial. Green has a very unsure way of staging critical sequences and misuses Bullock’s charms. Unlike other films in this message movie genre (Argo and Thank You For Smoking, for instance), the weight of the situation is rarely conveyed, and there’s little gravitas to the opposition to provide counterbalance to the cynicism. Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina and Anthony Mackie are rather underutilized in potentially juicy supporting parts. It’s largely a misfire.
Related article: Learn PR tips inspired by Sandra Bullock’s character on the Cookerly PR blog.
Flawed and fascinating like its titular hero, Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs (A-) is a biopic film seeking a new form factor. Told in three critical flashpoints of the computer industry titan’s life – namely, his launch of the overhyped Apple Macintosh, of the failed NeXT computer and of the wildly popular iMac that ushered in a new digital renaissance – Boyle and auteur screenwriter Aaron Sorkin fashion the tale of a fabulist impresario windbag who surrounds himself with people who act as fun house mirrors and lenses into his control freak world and undeniable genius. Michael Fassbender is simply phenomenal in the demanding and often unlikable role, with Kate Winslet and Jeff Daniels providing bright but thankless support as workplace foils to Jobs’ most repellant qualities. By jettisoning linear storytelling and embracing backstage patter, tone poem and near-requiem, the film is sure to confound most in its viewing audience. The movie’s distancing subject matter and petulant protagonist are near certain to be off-putting to most. Boyle rarely hits a false note and makes superb points about man and machine. Like underappreciated works of Kubrick, this austere film is likely to be better received years from now. It is telling that the movie focuses more of Jobs as artist than scientist, with his meta-theatrical launches taking place in symphony halls and his maestro metaphors falling from the lips like sweet sonnets. As film, it’s a perplexing and quixotic gallery. Given the early box office returns, it’s a fever dream most viewers will save for home viewing; but it’s absorbing for sure and nearly as odd and inventive as the man who inspired it.
Related article: Learn PR tips inspired by Kate Winslet’s character on the Cookerly PR blog.
Hey, kids! There’s a new movie you can recommend to both your dad and your mom, whether they enjoy spy stories of two-for-one BOGO deals. Steven Spielberg’s old-fashioned Cold War-set Bridge of Spies (B+) thrusts a real-life insurance lawyer played by Tom Hanks into a role negotiating the exchange of a Russian spy for two, count ’em two, captive Americans. Mark Rylance is a standout as the aging Eastern operative, and his sequences opposite Hanks are poignant and illuminating. Spielberg excels in pacing and period detail and helping the story surge into escalating stakes. The movie takes shape as more of a drama than a thriller when the most taut moment involves two men with umbrellas chasing each other down a rainy sidewalk, but the creative cadence of a Coen Brothers screenplay allows the words to stimulate intellectual adventure. Plus, Hanks is enjoyable rather than irritating in his latest Everyman role. The film is sturdy and entertaining; and while it breaks no amazing new ground, sometimes a good film by a great director is enough.
A meditative and engaging slow-burn thriller about U.S. operatives infiltrating the drug culture on our Southern border, Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario (B) unravels its mysteries in small bursts but doesn’t quite achieve the expected heft of its high-minded messages. For a while it is so focused on visuals of topographies such as highways and desert passageways that it could have been directed by Google Earth. Enter FBI agent Emily Blunt who transforms from spy to soldier when she seeks to understand the machinations behind the horror of kidnappings related to drug kingpins. Blunt does an admirable job in a rather inert central role, but the meandering screenplay marginalizes the protagonist a bit before the final act. Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin play the men who call our heroine to action, and they too are effective in their underwritten roles. Del Toro gets to shine in a climactic encounter and embodies the Byzantine traits of warriors in a convoluted and unwinnable drug war. The most engaging sequence of the film showcases a shootout in broad daylight in heavy traffic in which multiple killings don’t even make the nightly news. Viewers may get the feeling that even a highly trained squad with history of infiltrating drug lords is only scratching the surface. The film does very little for the Juarez tourism board. Overall the movie is taut, tense and transportive. It just barely misses the mark of becoming the definitive film on its subject.
Rob Letterman’s Goosebumps (D) joins this summer’s Pixels in a series of kids’ films that value effects over imagination. Jack Black plays R.L. Stine, reclusive author of the titular young adult book series. With a vaguely academic accent and face frozen on “concerned,” Black provides a performance only slightly more irritating than Slappy the vaudeville dummy, the worst doll antagonist since the last installment of Child’s Play. Teen actor Dylan Minnette is slightly more expressive and makes the film’s first thirty minutes a bit charming before he accidentally unleashes a potpourri of blandly designed CGI monsters trapped in books. The filmmakers cynically leverage a popular kid lit franchise to lure a big crowd to the box office, but it’s all an auto pilot triumph over creative inspiration.
Given the amount of frustration most Americans have trying to function when they’ve lost a smartphone, it’s fascinating watching Matt Damon play an astronaut stranded on Mars having to go Full MacGyver, tapping into his brilliant scientific and survival skills to improvise in a world of limited food, oxygen, shelter, technology, human contact and rescue plans. In what is most certainly both Damon’s and director Ridley Scott’s best film in years, The Martian (A) excels as a saga of persistence and problem solving, including narrative flourishes to continually up the stakes in what could have otherwise felt like a long slog to resolution. Scott deftly marshals seamless effects and an impressive supporting cast of characters summoned to kick off global and interplanetary collaboration to bring the hero home. Some of the roles are cast too well given limited screen time (Do we really need Kristen Wiig as stern PR counsel or Sebastian Stan as a NASA scientist with collectively less than a dozen lines?) Damon brings effective swagger and likability to the central role, and the actor’s penchant for working with prestigious directors pays off big time here. Scott does both human drama and outer space adventures well, and this one is one of his best.
Related article: Learn PR tips inspired by Kristen Wiig’s character on the Cookerly PR blog.
Calling a movie a treasure trove for HR professionals looking for great examples of key learnings in the intergenerational workplace isn’t damning it with faint praise. In fact, Nancy Meyers’ The Intern (B), in which Robert De Niro is a widower who lands a “senior citizen internship” for an e-commerce impresario played by Anne Hathaway, transcends built-in sentiment and stereotypes to be largely effective. Is it a reverse Annie or The Devil Wears Prada? A little of both. Do De Niro and Hathaway harness everything in their thespian powers to build characters within the contours and confines of Meyers’ broad-stroke screenwriting? For the most part. There are missed opportunities galore as a white-washed cast and some very unrealistic pivot points provide a slick veneer to the proceedings. But a fun premise, good acting, bright chemistry and interesting juxtapositions yield an entertaining film. Call De Niro the work/life balance genie, reminding workers everywhere that some old-fashioned values may just provide wish fulfillment for the modern office.
Related workplace story: Learn how I secured my third job at an interactive company using a 90-Day plan in this USA Today article.
For a film ostensibly about the pulsating best of electronic dance music, Max Joseph’s We Are Your Friends (D) is listless and low energy, and even the music is only good on occasion. A vehicle for Zac Efron to flex his musical muscles in the central role as an up-and-coming DJ in San Fernando Valley, the film famously flopped in its theatrical release, appearing on the surface to be like a pretentious nightclub that people avoid in droves. The movie’s characters talk in unfulfilled platitudes about achieving the dream; now available for a second chance at life on the home viewing front, it’s still not worth the stream. Caught up in a love triangle with a promoter/mentor phoned in by Wes Bentley and mutual love interest played by the beautiful but vacant Emily Ratajkowski, Efron channels Cocktail-era Tom Cruise, except with considerably less charm, coasting along in a formulaic plot that does none of its ensemble any favors and sometimes just feels like an overlong Sprite or Abercrombie & Fitch commercial. The golden god even suffers for his art, with the eyebrow scar and all. The film peaks early with a promising rotoscope animated PCP hallucination. Perhaps it needed to stay on something because it’s never onto something.
Even though the film purports to be about dreaming up the impossible, Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk (D) has larger plausibility issues in the form of plot, performances and purpose. This film about the French daredevil who walked on a wire from one Twin Tower to the other in 1974 NYC goes down as one of the filmmaker’s most stunning disappointments. The inventive director who once romanced a South American stone, took us on time travels with Marty McFly, framed a cartoon rabbit into real-life and integrated a famous Gump into modern history has, for the past two decades, turned his attention and technical wizardry to tedious affairs involving dead-eyed CGI characters, blustery performances by A-listers and special effects in search of a story. Awkwardly narrated in an atrocious French accent by its central character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this true-life tightrope tale is ham-strung by a trite script, a silly tone and petty plotting to arrive at a daffy denouement. Ben Kingsley even out-does Gordon-Levitt in the game of strange accents. Plus the much-heralded effects re-creating the majestic skyscrapers of the past are odd, with the protagonist’s promenades filmed at one of about five of the same angles again and again. Devoid of the high-stakes heights or tension that are supposed to be at its centerpiece, this film is instead an all-time low for a moviemaker in a slump.
Given the film’s depiction of the joys and promises of immigrating from Ireland to New York boroughs just six decades ago, John Crowley’s Brooklyn (B) should be required viewing for a few presidential aspirants. Saoirse Ronan carries the drama on her capable shoulders and shows her character mature right before our eyes; the actress is rather magnificent in coming-of-age mode. Her central character falls head over heels for a working-class Italian suitor (a charming Emory Cohen), and the film’s primary conflict involves this burgeoning love in The States versus the promise of a different life with another man in her homeland (Domhnall Gleeson in an underdeveloped role). The plot really stacks the deck given the mounting successes of life in America, but the overall journey is enjoyable as Ronan’s character pulls considerable empathy. The art direction and costuming are authentic and lush, and what could have devolved quickly into melodrama is lifted in Crowley’s skilled hands. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are women as peers and elders who want to hold our heroine down, and her ability to be resilient and push forward is inspiring.
Flawed and fascinating like its titular hero, Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs (A-) is a biopic film seeking a new form factor. Told in three critical flashpoints of the computer industry titan’s life – namely, his launch of the overhyped Apple Macintosh, of the failed NeXT computer and of the wildly popular iMac that ushered in a new digital renaissance – Boyle and auteur screenwriter Aaron Sorkin fashion the tale of a fabulist impresario windbag who surrounds himself with people who act as fun house mirrors and lenses into his control freak world and undeniable genius. Michael Fassbender is simply phenomenal in the demanding and often unlikable role, with Kate Winslet and Jeff Daniels providing bright but thankless support as workplace foils to Jobs’ most repellant qualities. By jettisoning linear storytelling and embracing backstage patter, tone poem and near-requiem, the film is sure to confound most in its viewing audience. The movie’s distancing subject matter and petulant protagonist are near certain to be off-putting to most. Boyle rarely hits a false note and makes superb points about man and machine. Like underappreciated works of Kubrick, this austere film is likely to be better received years from now. It is telling that the movie focuses more of Jobs as artist than scientist, with his meta-theatrical launches taking place in symphony halls and his maestro metaphors falling from the lips like sweet sonnets. As film, it’s a perplexing and quixotic gallery. Given the early box office returns, it’s a fever dream most viewers will save for home viewing; but it’s absorbing for sure and nearly as odd and inventive as the man who inspired it.
Hey, kids! There’s a new movie you can recommend to both your dad and your mom, whether they enjoy spy stories of two-for-one BOGO deals. Steven Spielberg’s old-fashioned Cold War-set Bridge of Spies (B+) thrusts a real-life insurance lawyer played by Tom Hanks into a role negotiating the exchange of a Russian spy for two, count ’em two, captive Americans. Mark Rylance is a standout as the aging Eastern operative, and his sequences opposite Hanks are poignant and illuminating. Spielberg excels in pacing and period detail and helping the story surge into escalating stakes. The movie takes shape as more of a drama than a thriller when the most taut moment involves two men with umbrellas chasing each other down a rainy sidewalk, but the creative cadence of a Coen Brothers screenplay allows the words to stimulate intellectual adventure. Plus, Hanks is enjoyable rather than irritating in his latest Everyman role. The film is sturdy and entertaining; and while it breaks no amazing new ground, sometimes a good film by a great director is enough.
For a film ostensibly about the pulsating best of electronic dance music, Max Joseph’s We Are Your Friends (D) is listless and low energy, and even the music is only good on occasion. A vehicle for Zac Efron to flex his musical muscles in the central role as an up-and-coming DJ in San Fernando Valley, the film famously flopped in its theatrical release, appearing on the surface to be like a pretentious nightclub that people avoid in droves. The movie’s characters talk in unfulfilled platitudes about achieving the dream; now available for a second chance at life on the home viewing front, it’s still not worth the stream. Caught up in a love triangle with a promoter/mentor phoned in by Wes Bentley and mutual love interest played by the beautiful but vacant Emily Ratajkowski, Efron channels Cocktail-era Tom Cruise, except with considerably less charm, coasting along in a formulaic plot that does none of its ensemble any favors and sometimes just feels like an overlong Sprite or Abercrombie & Fitch commercial. The golden god even suffers for his art, with the eyebrow scar and all. The film peaks early with a promising rotoscope animated PCP hallucination. Perhaps it needed to stay on something because it’s never onto something.
Even though the film purports to be about dreaming up the impossible, Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk (D) has larger plausibility issues in the form of plot, performances and purpose. This film about the French daredevil who walked on a wire from one Twin Tower to the other in 1974 NYC goes down as one of the filmmaker’s most stunning disappointments. The inventive director who once romanced a South American stone, took us on time travels with Marty McFly, framed a cartoon rabbit into real-life and integrated a famous Gump into modern history has, for the past two decades, turned his attention and technical wizardry to tedious affairs involving dead-eyed CGI characters, blustery performances by A-listers and special effects in search of a story. Awkwardly narrated in an atrocious French accent by its central character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this true-life tightrope tale is ham-strung by a trite script, a silly tone and petty plotting to arrive at a daffy denouement. Ben Kingsley even out-does Gordon-Levitt in the game of strange accents. Plus the much-heralded effects re-creating the majestic skyscrapers of the past are odd, with the protagonist’s promenades filmed at one of about five of the same angles again and again. Devoid of the high-stakes heights or tension that are supposed to be at its centerpiece, this film is instead an all-time low for a moviemaker in a slump.