In Theaters Archives - Page 2 of 8 - FilmFisher

Dumbo (PG)

In a sense, viewing this iteration of Dumbo seated next to my mother was to come full circle: I watched the original film every single day for a month when I was a toddler – or so she tells me. Of course the Nietzschean themes of eternal recurrence and childlike wonder are so archetypal that the original film, a masterpiece written in the key of kitsch, uses them without so much as a wink or a nod to belie its philosophical quandary or artistic intent. This latest film had high standards to live up to.
Shazam! (PG-13)

As an avid comic book fan, let me tell you… This glut of superhero films we’ve been enduring for the past decade or so has been absolutely exhausting. Quality control ensures that each of these films look the part, but very few have captured that kinetic childhood joy of flipping through comic book panels and dreaming about […]
Us (R)

Since we’re about to speak at length about a horror film, especially one directed by someone that every news source likes to tout as the next Hitchcock, it seems appropriate to use a quote from a Dario Argento film. After all, Argento was the true successor to Hitchcock, and even then, to call him just that would be […]
Captain Marvel (PG-13)

Somewhere in Captain Marvel, the heroine (Brie Larson) sits down to chat with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Earth has been invaded by shapeshifting aliens, and to prove he isn’t one, Fury rattles off a string of backstory details and character quirks. He then asks the good Captain to do the same, but instead of […]
Alita: Battle Angel (PG-13)

Alita: Battle Angel knows exactly what kind of film it is. At one point during its two hour runtime, surprisingly brisk for a big budget Hollywood blockbuster these days, Alita (Rosa Salazar) straight up offers another person her heart. She goes so far as to remove it from her mechanical chest, holding it in her hand […]
Vice (R)

When the 2019 Academy Award nominees were released in late January, many people were excited about who and what was being considered for an Oscar in the different vital and sometimes overlooked categories that make filmmaking possible. But of course, the highlights are the nominees for Best Picture, representing the best movies had to offer for […]
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (PG)

The LEGO Movie is the best American animated feature film of the last decade. The LEGO Movie 2 is not. It’s not even the second best – that crown probably goes to Toy Story 3 – but I would put it in my top five. Stylistically, the sequel is just as strong as any of the other LEGO releases, which is […]
Roma (R)

One of the greatest strengths of film as an art form is its innate ability to create a sense of empathy. The most affecting films are the ones we relate to most closely, not necessarily because we sympathize, which is merely to feel sorrow for a misfortunate without ever truly understanding the deeper connotations behind it, […]
Bohemian Rhapsody (PG-13)

Strip away the controversy surrounding Bohemian Rhapsody, and all that’s left is a typical awards-bait biopic that’s not as bad as you’d feared. Nor is it as good as you’d hoped; it just sort of exists, with the occasional inspired moment and plenty of dull passages to fill the space in between those. In many ways, there […]
If Beale Street Could Talk (R)

Born out of the same unobtrusive intimacy as Barry Jenkins’s previous offering, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk is a visually lush and poetic laudation of the mysterious and transcendental thing that is love. It’s a celebration of love’s redemptive propensity and its healing properties. Yet more than that, If Beale Street Could Talk is […]
Cold War (R)

Paweł Pawlikowski’s austerely beautiful Cold War begins with villagers performing a folk song about a man standing at his lover’s door, begging her to “open up.” This sense of longing courses through the film: to watch Cold War is to feel oneself hovering on the threshold of something mysterious, inaccessible, and slow to open itself […]
The Favourite (R)

According to Hegel, every major historical event repeats itself twice; according to Marx’s notorious addendum, the first time is a tragedy, the second a farce. Most things happen twice in The Favourite, but director Yorgos Lanthimos reverses the rhythm so farce gives way to tragedy, or else layers the two over each other until we cannot tell […]
Mary Poppins Returns (PG)

Although it’s somewhat of a cornball statement, and it’s certainly not applicable to this modern era of the House of Mouse, there really is some kind of Disney Magic. You’d have to go back several decades at this point to see that magic in action, but there was a time when Walt Disney Pictures knew […]
Aquaman (PG-13)

When FilmFisher’s managing editor Timothy Lawrence asked me to review Aquaman, I groaned. I had only seen one DC film since Man of Steel (which I loathe), and that was the Marvel-esque Wonder Woman. I have heard tales of how Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League are incredibly awful. Therefore I was not […]
Green Book (PG-13)

Peter Farrelly’s Green Book is a lesson to all Americans: Black Lives really do Matter, and, just maybe, all lives matter too. A house divided against itself cannot stand, but the division this country is now faced with is not one of race, sex, gender, sexuality, or any other label. It is a division of […]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (PG)

I love Spider-Man. To be more specific, I love Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. That isn’t to say I don’t love any other iteration of the character but it is the standard with which I judge all other iterations. Perhaps it isn’t the most objective, and it certainly isn’t the most ideal. While I think it is the […]
Widows (R)

You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been nearly three weeks since I initially saw Widows. Immediately after the screening, I felt very positively about the film, which I thought leveraged some really great technical filmmaking and a game cast to offset a messy script with too many threads and a pretty weak late-game twist. But in […]
Ralph Breaks the Internet (PG)

I would probably do well to confess up front that I am not really the right person to review Ralph Breaks the Internet. I harbor no fondness for its predecessor, Wreck-It Ralph, which I saw once upon its release in 2012 – and, while I’m being frank, I have not really enjoyed a new animated […]
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 […]
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (PG-13)

I have dreaded writing this review ever since I left the theater, and don’t think I will get much enjoyment out of it. There is no pleasure to be had in speaking against a group of artists whose work you have always enjoyed — and even been shaped by — in the past. Some take […]