Comedy Films
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (R)
The films of the Coen brothers are replete with dark ironies, but few rival the fact that the staunchest moralists working in Hollywood today have been so consistently labeled as cynics or dismissed as nihilists. Their impeccable new effort, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is the latest in a streak of masterpieces now over a […]
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Moonstruck (PG)
A romantic comedy starring Nicholas Cage and Cher has no business being this good. That tends to be the sentiment, anyhow. But it is this good, and so are they. Cher is lovely as a woman whose frank outlook on life can’t hide a romantic streak. Cage’s mania is expertly channeled, giving him exuberant ideals to proclaim […]
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Eighth Grade (R)
The irony that I usually write about horror films or coming-of-age stories for this site has not been lost upon me. In that respect, it feels like Eighth Grade is the perfect intersection of the two genres, as it surprisingly captures the very accurate, cringeworthy horror that going through eighth grade is actually like for most normal […]
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Ant-Man and the Wasp (PG-13)
When the first Ant-Man was released three summers ago, it was a refreshing breeze that aired out an increasingly stuffy and stultifying superhero atmosphere. After the previous four MCU entries all ended with a large population barely escaping decimation from some magic stone or tech-turned-terror — and especially after the heady philosophy, jumbled plotting, and […]
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Incredibles 2 (PG)
In the last 40 years, American theaters have received around 70 superhero movies with lead characters recognized and known by audiences who’ve never even picked up a comic book. Their rate of release has gone from 4 openings a decade in the 1980s to 5 or more a year since 2016. The question for many […]
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Tully (R)
At first glance, Tully looks like another film that makes parenting – specifically motherhood – seem mundane and miserable. There are plenty of moments in the film where kids are kicking the backs of car seats and babies are crying, but Tully says there is another truth about motherhood that gives the mundane a meaning. […]
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Downsizing (R)
At the beginning of Downsizing, we meet Paul Safranek (Matt Damon). He dropped out of med school to take care of his mother in his cluttered childhood home. They talk about the recent breakthrough of miniaturizing people, which can shrink a person down to five inches tall. Apparently, this process will save the world from […]
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Phantom Thread (R)
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the very best American filmmakers working today, and quite possibly the most interesting. His mastery of the craft is nearly unparalleled, placing him on that elusive, immortal plane where the likes of the Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg currently reside. Yet what sets him apart, even among such esteemed company, is how perplexingly eclectic he is.
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Lady Bird (R)
There are a great deal of moments in Lady Bird that made me feel as though I were looking into a mirror, nostalgic for a past that was incredibly close to Lady Bird’s. Those moments weren’t always the funny ones, to be perfectly honest. Those moments weren’t always the funny ones, to be perfectly honest. I distinctly remember squabbles with my parents, feeling as though I were independent enough at seventeen not to need their approval.
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American Graffiti (PG)
American Graffiti is arguably George Lucas’ masterpiece, not necessarily because it’s any more or less culturally significant or cinematically innovative than Star Wars, but simply because it’s Lucas’s most personal film. Here is a piece of his life, adapted into an ensemble piece that explores his own personal sense of nostalgia in a surprisingly bittersweet and grounded way.
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Karma sans Justice: The Big Short (R)
Nerds are the last to finish first, but, if The Big Short is to be believed, that might be just about the best time to get ahead. Nerds have a sense of this. They might fall behind the jocks on the sporting fields and have all of the humiliating wedgies in high school; they might […]
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Hail, Caesar!: Hollywood Meets the Inferno (PG-13)
The religious who live outside the film industry tend to think of Hollywood as a bastion of secular materialism. In their view, directors and starlets throw lavish parties and cruise down Rodeo Drive in search of the next designer purse. Certainly Hollywood has its share of hedonism. However, it is also a deeply spiritual place. […]
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Hail, Caesar! A Tale of The Christ (PG-13)
Early in Hail, Caesar!, the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, protagonist Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) speaks to a room full of religious figures: a Protestant preacher, a Catholic priest, an Orthodox clergyman, and a Jewish rabbi. Mannix, a fixer for the fictional Capitol Pictures studio, explains that their biggest release of the year […]
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Left Behind: A Good Premise for a Lousy Movie (Not Rated)
Blessed be Netflix, that magical website which allows one to watch terrible movies without feeling guilty about paying for it. After all, you already dished out $8 for the month. The only problem is that sometimes the movies aren’t just bad. They are horrid. Left Behind is a perfect illustration. One will, no doubt, walk […]
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E., or, “The Anti-Kingsman” (PG-13)
In his essay, “Kingsman and the Maybe Genius of Non-Winking Satire,” Hulk Film Crit makes the rather bold assertion that Matthew Vaughn is a kind of blockbuster Martin Scorsese. As different as their methods may be, Hulk argues that their intentions are deeply similar: both approach ugly subjects with a brutal honesty that acknowledges the allure […]
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In Bruges (R)
Early in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell), two Irish hitmen, are standing in a museum, contemplating a painting of the Last Judgment. Ray describes purgatory as “the in-betweeny one – you weren’t really shit, but you weren’t all that great either” – but the humor of the description belies […]
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Holy Satire: Believe Me (PG-13)
God created satire. At the end of Job—the oldest book of the Bible—God answers Job’s bitter questions with a set of his own humorous, unanswerable queries. In Isaiah and Jeremiah, God mocks idolaters by describing how useless it is to expect anything from a god made with your own hands. Humor ideally brings out the […]
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The Importance of Being Poppy : Happy-Go-Lucky (R)
The opening scene of Mike Leigh’s shamefully overlooked Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) is a master class in establishing a character. Poppy, one of the great female characters in cinema, is introduced riding her bike. Her course is a wobbly wheeled delight, she’s dressed eccentrically and smiles frequently, but what is most noticeable is her full-eyed wonder, her […]
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Kingsman: The Secret Service (R)
With a film as superficially slick and fun as Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, it’s mightily tempting to view the film on an accordingly superficial level, judging it based on its shallow pleasures and surface flash – and certainly, there are manifold pleasures to be enumerated here. One could list off the film’s many […]
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Kingsman: So Much Action, So Few Returns (R)
Colin Firth has a reputation for playing the underdog. He is an urbane actor and generally makes intelligent decisions in the roles that he plays. But, since his role as Mr. Darcy in the Pride and Prejudice miniseries 20 years ago, he has made a career of portraying a man in an uphill battle, sometimes […]