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COMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicOLD PARTNER
Old Partner isn’t entirely the story of man and ox shuffling off into the sunset together. It’s also the story of poverty, sacrifice, physical agony, and very real emotional tumult. That’s because Choi also has a long-suffering wife, Lee Sam-soon, whose every word is a lament over his hardheaded insistence on caring for the ox, whose health and happiness he’s unambiguously placed over IT'S MATT DAMON VERSUS ALAIN DELON IN THE BATTLE OF THE Purple Noon (1960) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Tom Ripley is a chameleon. Over the course of five tense page-turners by the American novelist Patricia Highsmith, the famous con artist assumes stolen identities, falsifies documents, and murderously ties up loose ends—all to forge, in multiple senses of the word, the life that he wants.For an actor, the challenge and perhaps also theJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is a JACK NICHOLSON AND MERYL STREEP HIT THE STREETS IN IRONWEED Ironweed (1987). Ironweed wastes no time in establishing the weight of its sadness: Very early on, Francis (Jack Nicholson), a Depression-era bum poking around his hometown of Albany, New York, visits the grave of his long-gone infant son.The baby died just days old when Francis dropped him, and it becomes clear that this moment is about when Francis checked out of his family life.Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN
There are plenty of boys-to-men films about the raunchy adventures of pleasure-seeking teenagers, but Alfonso Cuarón's inspired and exhilarating road movie Y Tu Mamá También taps so directly into their teeming energy that it all but levitates off the screen. Its heroes, a pair of raffish young scoundrels and layabouts who care about nothing outside their own gratification, could fit in SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.COMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epic ...AND GOD CREATED WOMAN Clearly viewing female sexuality as a force only marginally less dangerous than the hydrogen bomb, And God Created Woman is an awful film full of stilted dialogue, egregious sexism, and ugly racism. But as a depiction of post-war masculinity attempting to come to terms with a new breed of woman, it's a historic bit of pop-culturesociology.
OLD PARTNER
Old Partner isn’t entirely the story of man and ox shuffling off into the sunset together. It’s also the story of poverty, sacrifice, physical agony, and very real emotional tumult. That’s because Choi also has a long-suffering wife, Lee Sam-soon, whose every word is a lament over his hardheaded insistence on caring for the ox, whose health and happiness he’s unambiguously placed over IT'S MATT DAMON VERSUS ALAIN DELON IN THE BATTLE OF THE Purple Noon (1960) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Tom Ripley is a chameleon. Over the course of five tense page-turners by the American novelist Patricia Highsmith, the famous con artist assumes stolen identities, falsifies documents, and murderously ties up loose ends—all to forge, in multiple senses of the word, the life that he wants.For an actor, the challenge and perhaps also theRUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and JACK NICHOLSON AND MERYL STREEP HIT THE STREETS IN IRONWEED Ironweed (1987). Ironweed wastes no time in establishing the weight of its sadness: Very early on, Francis (Jack Nicholson), a Depression-era bum poking around his hometown of Albany, New York, visits the grave of his long-gone infant son.The baby died just days old when Francis dropped him, and it becomes clear that this moment is about when Francis checked out of his family life. SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.DESPICABLE ME
Until the “creep + orphans = happy family” formula starts demanding abrupt, unconvincing character mutations, Despicable Me is a giddy joy. It takes place in a world seemingly inspired by The Incredibles—the superheroes are missing, but the cartoon physics, crazy devices, and outsized conquer-the-world plots are all in place, ready to set up big action setpieces with a sly sense of humor.YOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way ofINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsSUPER 8 - FILM
Set in the streets, magic-hour-blanketed hills, and cluttered suburban homes of a small Ohio town as the 1970s edge into the ’80s, the J.J. Abrams -scripted-and-directed Super 8 —which Spielberg produced—consciously, and successfully, looks back to an era of abundant Spielbergiana. Joel Courtney leads a cast of talented, mostlyunfamiliar
JOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is a TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaMILLION DOLLAR BABY
Million Dollar Baby sets the stage for a hard-won triumph-over-adversity tale, but it's too wise about the boxing world to fall for easy victories, or even the redeeming, spirited letdown of the original Rocky.In Eastwood's hands, the standard training montages have a hushed, meditative quality, with a specific emphasis on the scientific half of "the sweet science" that no doubt stems fromKILLER JOE - FILM
Matthew McConaughey is this generation’s Robert Mitchum. This isn’t to say that the prime years McConaughey squandered shirtless in dire romantic comedies put him on equal footing with the iconic star of The Night Of The Hunter and Out Of The Past. But they have the same dangerous magnetism—lithe, relaxed, preternaturally self-assured, and almost feminine in their power to seduce. TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so that IN THE UNNERVING SUN CHOKE, A SICK WOMAN SPREADS HER Sarah Hagan has had two memorably substantial roles in her career thus far—both on television, and both over a decade ago. She was the rigorously prim mathlete Millie on Freaks And Geeks, and played Amanda, one of the “potentials” in the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Since the early 2000s, Hagan’s mostly been relegated to guest shots and bit parts, but that should change FILM | THE A.V. CLUB Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Advertisement Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Cruella coming to theaters and Disney+, we’re looking at some ofTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doCOMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicSAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
GALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of George Lucas'OH! CALCUTTA!
Oh! Calcutta!'s on-stage run lasted a remarkable 17 years, but it's still safe to assume that most Americans knew the show largely as fodder for Johnny Carson monologues. Decades before Viagra, Monica Lewinsky, or Brokeback Mountain, Oh! Calcutta! served an instant punchline, a provocative "nudie musical" that delighted in pushing square America's buttons. FILM | THE A.V. CLUB Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Advertisement Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Cruella coming to theaters and Disney+, we’re looking at some ofTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doCOMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicSAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
GALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of George Lucas'OH! CALCUTTA!
Oh! Calcutta!'s on-stage run lasted a remarkable 17 years, but it's still safe to assume that most Americans knew the show largely as fodder for Johnny Carson monologues. Decades before Viagra, Monica Lewinsky, or Brokeback Mountain, Oh! Calcutta! served an instant punchline, a provocative "nudie musical" that delighted in pushing square America's buttons. FILM | THE A.V. CLUB 1. There’s a running gag about binge-watching Friends in the sweet, amiable, mildly subversive indie comedy Together Together. It’s not a knee-slapper, exactly—the film uses a ’90s primetime phenomenon that’s become a shorthand for basic pop culture taste as an easy way to bridge the generational gap between two people .SAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenGALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of AVENGERS: ENDGAME REVIEW: A FUN, UNEVEN SCI-FI TEARJERKER Endgame is the true payoff, at least in terms of how (if not how well) it brings everything to a head. Instead of teasing future showdowns, it looks backwards, to what’s come before it—sometimes cleverly, sometimes quite literally, often with the excessive sentimentality of a Very Special Episode.RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky andTHE TOOTH FAIRY
Watching modern kiddie comedies, it’s generally better for the soul to look for ways in which the glass is half-full rather than half-empty. Case in point: The new Dwayne Johnson vehicle, The Tooth Fairy, doesn’t feature a lot of crotch-slamming, farting, singing CGI rodents, or shrieking children. It does feature Julie Andrews in a welcome return to her usual role as a sweetly benevolent TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's persona THE ASTONISHING DOCUMENTARY APOLLO 11 SHOOTS THE MOON Shutting down conspiracy theorists probably wasn’t high on director Todd Douglas Miller’s to-do list when he was making the documentary Apollo 11. So just consider it a bonus that his film about the first manned moon landing is so immersive that it feels like it’s happening in real-time on screen—and definitively un-faked. Apollo 11 doesn’t run through the usual grainy footage that IN THE UNNERVING SUN CHOKE, A SICK WOMAN SPREADS HER Sarah Hagan has had two memorably substantial roles in her career thus far—both on television, and both over a decade ago. She was the rigorously prim mathlete Millie on Freaks And Geeks, and played Amanda, one of the “potentials” in the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Since the early 2000s, Hagan’s mostly been relegated to guest shots and bit parts, but that should changeCOMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicSAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
OH! CALCUTTA!
Oh! Calcutta!'s on-stage run lasted a remarkable 17 years, but it's still safe to assume that most Americans knew the show largely as fodder for Johnny Carson monologues. Decades before Viagra, Monica Lewinsky, or Brokeback Mountain, Oh! Calcutta! served an instant punchline, a provocative "nudie musical" that delighted in pushing square America's buttons.GALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.COMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicSAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
OH! CALCUTTA!
Oh! Calcutta!'s on-stage run lasted a remarkable 17 years, but it's still safe to assume that most Americans knew the show largely as fodder for Johnny Carson monologues. Decades before Viagra, Monica Lewinsky, or Brokeback Mountain, Oh! Calcutta! served an instant punchline, a provocative "nudie musical" that delighted in pushing square America's buttons.GALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.SAW - FILM
They collect bones, dine on fresh brains, stitch together plus-size human skins, demonstrate the Seven Deadly Sins with grisly literalism, and delight in prodding existentially tortured detectives by leaving oblique clues at the crime scene. Yet no serial killer has ever been as gimmicky as the bogeyman in James Wan's uproariously idiotic thriller Saw, which plays like a cross between SevenAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenGALAXY QUEST
It's been a strange couple of years for the Star Trek franchise. At least since the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997, Trek's place in popular culture has seemed considerably less prominent, as two series left the air and the public's attention turned away from the principled humanism of Gene Roddenberry's creation and more toward the mythic vagaries of George Lucas' AVENGERS: ENDGAME REVIEW: A FUN, UNEVEN SCI-FI TEARJERKER Endgame is the true payoff, at least in terms of how (if not how well) it brings everything to a head. Instead of teasing future showdowns, it looks backwards, to what’s come before it—sometimes cleverly, sometimes quite literally, often with the excessive sentimentality of a Very Special Episode.RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaJACKIE BROWN
Probably the last thing anyone expected as Quentin Tarantino's follow up to the moment-defining Pulp Fiction was a low-key, leisurely paced film about aging, gracefully and otherwise. Beneath the intricate and entertaining adapted-from-Elmore Leonard heist plot, however, that's what Jackie Brown is—and it's to Tarantino's credit that he makes the film work on both levels. THE ASTONISHING DOCUMENTARY APOLLO 11 SHOOTS THE MOON Shutting down conspiracy theorists probably wasn’t high on director Todd Douglas Miller’s to-do list when he was making the documentary Apollo 11. So just consider it a bonus that his film about the first manned moon landing is so immersive that it feels like it’s happening in real-time on screen—and definitively un-faked. Apollo 11 doesn’t run through the usual grainy footage that A JOURNEY TO THE WEST SEQUEL SUFFERS WITHOUT STEPHEN CHOW But its new sequel, Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back, is an object lesson in the relative specialness of even a second-tier Chow effort. Chow has returned to write and produce this sequel, handing the directing reins over to veteran filmmaker Tsui Hark. Hark approximates the basic tone of the first movie, mixing cartoonishslapstick
IN THE UNNERVING SUN CHOKE, A SICK WOMAN SPREADS HER Sarah Hagan has had two memorably substantial roles in her career thus far—both on television, and both over a decade ago. She was the rigorously prim mathlete Millie on Freaks And Geeks, and played Amanda, one of the “potentials” in the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Since the early 2000s, Hagan’s mostly been relegated to guest shots and bit parts, but that should changeCOMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doPOINT BREAK
As Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves is much less interesting, but as an actor whose most famous line-reading would later be that awed “whoa” from The Matrix, he’s the right man for the part.A former star quarterback for Ohio State University—the name is a play on football greats Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana—Johnny joins the FBI’s Robbery Division straight from Quantico, where heOLD PARTNER
Old Partner isn’t entirely the story of man and ox shuffling off into the sunset together. It’s also the story of poverty, sacrifice, physical agony, and very real emotional tumult. That’s because Choi also has a long-suffering wife, Lee Sam-soon, whose every word is a lament over his hardheaded insistence on caring for the ox, whose health and happiness he’s unambiguously placed overINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows JACK NICHOLSON AND MERYL STREEP HIT THE STREETS IN IRONWEED Streep’s role is very much in her ’80s prestige wheelhouse, but this is a bigger departure for Nicholson, who was beginning to take more persona-heavy roles around this time, with Witches Of Eastwick and Broadcast News coming out the same year and Batman just around the corner. He has flashes of that devilish Nicholson charisma, but in this context, of course, it seems sadder—especially PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film looks like surefire crowd-pleasing entertainment, an action-comedy heist flick that will doubtless play to the strengths of its three appealing leads. ME BEFORE YOU IS A DRY-EYED TEARJERKER Emilia Clarke does a lot of eyebrow acting in Me Before You. As Louisa Clark, a whimsically dressed young woman who accepts a job as caretaker of a quadriplegic young man to help with her family’s dire finances, Clarke is a fair distance away from dragons or Terminators. To convey her open-hearted, high-spirited pluck, she raises her eyebrows until they’re practically smashed togetherCOMMUNE - FILM
The Black Bear communal ranch in northern California was partially funded by rock stars who were guilted into ponying up the dough by a handful of enterprising hippies who accused them of "trading off our lifestyle." That kind of defiant idealism was a lofty place for the Black Bears to start, and Jonathan Berman's documentary Commune covers the founders' inevitable descent intoTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doPOINT BREAK
As Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves is much less interesting, but as an actor whose most famous line-reading would later be that awed “whoa” from The Matrix, he’s the right man for the part.A former star quarterback for Ohio State University—the name is a play on football greats Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana—Johnny joins the FBI’s Robbery Division straight from Quantico, where heOLD PARTNER
Old Partner isn’t entirely the story of man and ox shuffling off into the sunset together. It’s also the story of poverty, sacrifice, physical agony, and very real emotional tumult. That’s because Choi also has a long-suffering wife, Lee Sam-soon, whose every word is a lament over his hardheaded insistence on caring for the ox, whose health and happiness he’s unambiguously placed overINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows JACK NICHOLSON AND MERYL STREEP HIT THE STREETS IN IRONWEED Streep’s role is very much in her ’80s prestige wheelhouse, but this is a bigger departure for Nicholson, who was beginning to take more persona-heavy roles around this time, with Witches Of Eastwick and Broadcast News coming out the same year and Batman just around the corner. He has flashes of that devilish Nicholson charisma, but in this context, of course, it seems sadder—especially PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film looks like surefire crowd-pleasing entertainment, an action-comedy heist flick that will doubtless play to the strengths of its three appealing leads. ME BEFORE YOU IS A DRY-EYED TEARJERKER Emilia Clarke does a lot of eyebrow acting in Me Before You. As Louisa Clark, a whimsically dressed young woman who accepts a job as caretaker of a quadriplegic young man to help with her family’s dire finances, Clarke is a fair distance away from dragons or Terminators. To convey her open-hearted, high-spirited pluck, she raises her eyebrows until they’re practically smashed together FILM | THE A.V. CLUB Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Advertisement Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Cruella coming to theaters and Disney+, we’re looking at some ofSUPER 8 - FILM
For a stretch of the 1980s, there wasn’t enough Steven Spielberg to go around. While continuing to direct a movie every year or two, Spielberg produced films that had the look and feel of Spielberg-by-proxy, films filled with end-of-childhood adventures, suburbs, and small towns that doubled as unexpected sites of wonder or horror. In the best of them, directors like Joe Dante and RobertINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsPOINT BREAK
As Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves is much less interesting, but as an actor whose most famous line-reading would later be that awed “whoa” from The Matrix, he’s the right man for the part.A former star quarterback for Ohio State University—the name is a play on football greats Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana—Johnny joins the FBI’s Robbery Division straight from Quantico, where heYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way ofJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is a IT'S MATT DAMON VERSUS ALAIN DELON IN THE BATTLE OF THE Purple Noon (1960) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Tom Ripley is a chameleon. Over the course of five tense page-turners by the American novelist Patricia Highsmith, the famous con artist assumes stolen identities, falsifies documents, and murderously ties up loose ends—all to forge, in multiple senses of the word, the life that he wants.For an actor, the challenge and perhaps also the TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaTREASURE PLANET
Even if Robert Louis Stevenson's children's classic Treasure Island begged for another remake, it didn't necessarily beg for a remake set in space. Disney's animated feature Treasure Planet seems to recognize this fact by ignoring it; once established, the setting pretty much drifts in the background without further comment. Set in a universe that owes as much to Ray Bradbury as to THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be tooTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is aYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
POINT BREAK
Over the protests of their perpetually exasperated boss—a cop-movie cliché that John C. McGinley heroically resuscitates—Johnny and Pappas follow up on Pappas’ theory that the crooks are surfers and get the beach samples to prove it. A natural athlete, Johnny takes a few surfing lessons from Tyler (Lori Petty) and tries to infiltratethe
THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is aYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
POINT BREAK
Over the protests of their perpetually exasperated boss—a cop-movie cliché that John C. McGinley heroically resuscitates—Johnny and Pappas follow up on Pappas’ theory that the crooks are surfers and get the beach samples to prove it. A natural athlete, Johnny takes a few surfing lessons from Tyler (Lori Petty) and tries to infiltratethe
THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's persona FILM | THE A.V. CLUB Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Advertisement Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Cruella coming to theaters and Disney+, we’re looking at some ofSUPER 8 - FILM
Saying more would spoil Super 8’s carefully cultivated aura of surprise, but suffice it to say that what follows won’t be too surprising to those who have seen the films that lend Super 8 their DNA—Spielberg’s and others.That makes Abrams’ film both welcomingly and frustratingly familiar, and more the latter as it goes along. Abrams has a gift for capturing awe and dread—sometimesYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is a IT FOLLOWS, MIDSOMMAR, AND THE TREND OF "ELEVATED HORROR" It’s tough to pinpoint the exact origins of the expression “elevated horror.” But it was sometime around the middle of last decade that someone coined the term to refer to a new renaissance of atmospheric, critically acclaimed scary movies like It Follows, The Babadook, and The Witch.Is it a useful distinction or just a condescending buzzword? FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS Perhaps fitting for a movie about pals looking for sex without commitment, Friend With Benefits wants to have it both ways: It decries the “lies” of Katherine Heigl romantic comedies, yet follows the same script. It shuns the wuss-rock stylings of John Mayer, yet gooses up the soundtrack with a drippy solo acoustic version of “Boys Don’t Cry.” And it affects a cooler-than-thouPOINT BLANK
A tower of lean muscle topped by dead-set eyes and hair that looks like it's been white since his birth, Lee Marvin was never destined to play romantic leads. But while those physical attributes would have relegated other actors to thug roles, Marvin found ways to turn them to his advantage, whether by taking his tough-guy image to the limit, parceling out moments of tenderness, or playingTREASURE PLANET
Even if Robert Louis Stevenson's children's classic Treasure Island begged for another remake, it didn't necessarily beg for a remake set in space. Disney's animated feature Treasure Planet seems to recognize this fact by ignoring it; once established, the setting pretty much drifts in the background without further comment. Set in a universe that owes as much to Ray Bradbury as to TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so thatTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is aYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
POINT BREAK
Over the protests of their perpetually exasperated boss—a cop-movie cliché that John C. McGinley heroically resuscitates—Johnny and Pappas follow up on Pappas’ theory that the crooks are surfers and get the beach samples to prove it. A natural athlete, Johnny takes a few surfing lessons from Tyler (Lori Petty) and tries to infiltratethe
THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is aYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
POINT BREAK
Over the protests of their perpetually exasperated boss—a cop-movie cliché that John C. McGinley heroically resuscitates—Johnny and Pappas follow up on Pappas’ theory that the crooks are surfers and get the beach samples to prove it. A natural athlete, Johnny takes a few surfing lessons from Tyler (Lori Petty) and tries to infiltratethe
THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's persona FILM | THE A.V. CLUB Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Advertisement Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Cruella coming to theaters and Disney+, we’re looking at some ofSUPER 8 - FILM
Saying more would spoil Super 8’s carefully cultivated aura of surprise, but suffice it to say that what follows won’t be too surprising to those who have seen the films that lend Super 8 their DNA—Spielberg’s and others.That makes Abrams’ film both welcomingly and frustratingly familiar, and more the latter as it goes along. Abrams has a gift for capturing awe and dread—sometimesYOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way of TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's personaJOHN ADAMS - FILM
John Adams was one of the unlikeliest founding fathers, more swept up in the events of the American Revolution than out in front of them. Because of that, he's been an ideal subject for two ground-level studies of how America came to be: David McCullough's epic biography John Adams, and HBO's seven-part, nearly nine-hour adaptation of same.As portrayed by Paul Giamatti on HBO, Adams is a IT FOLLOWS, MIDSOMMAR, AND THE TREND OF "ELEVATED HORROR" It’s tough to pinpoint the exact origins of the expression “elevated horror.” But it was sometime around the middle of last decade that someone coined the term to refer to a new renaissance of atmospheric, critically acclaimed scary movies like It Follows, The Babadook, and The Witch.Is it a useful distinction or just a condescending buzzword? FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS Perhaps fitting for a movie about pals looking for sex without commitment, Friend With Benefits wants to have it both ways: It decries the “lies” of Katherine Heigl romantic comedies, yet follows the same script. It shuns the wuss-rock stylings of John Mayer, yet gooses up the soundtrack with a drippy solo acoustic version of “Boys Don’t Cry.” And it affects a cooler-than-thouPOINT BLANK
A tower of lean muscle topped by dead-set eyes and hair that looks like it's been white since his birth, Lee Marvin was never destined to play romantic leads. But while those physical attributes would have relegated other actors to thug roles, Marvin found ways to turn them to his advantage, whether by taking his tough-guy image to the limit, parceling out moments of tenderness, or playingTREASURE PLANET
Even if Robert Louis Stevenson's children's classic Treasure Island begged for another remake, it didn't necessarily beg for a remake set in space. Disney's animated feature Treasure Planet seems to recognize this fact by ignoring it; once established, the setting pretty much drifts in the background without further comment. Set in a universe that owes as much to Ray Bradbury as to TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so thatTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so that THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.THE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so that THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.STAR TREK - FILM
Mothballed early this decade by a string of increasingly unpopular TV series and films, the venerable Star Trek series hasn’t so much been pulled out of storage with this new film as dusted off, broken down to its most basic parts, streamlined, and sent blazing off at an acute angle from its original course. Directed by J.J. Abrams—it’s his second feature directorial effort after helpingINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsDESPICABLE ME
Until the “creep + orphans = happy family” formula starts demanding abrupt, unconvincing character mutations, Despicable Me is a giddy joy. It takes place in a world seemingly inspired by The Incredibles—the superheroes are missing, but the cartoon physics, crazy devices, and outsized conquer-the-world plots are all in place, ready to set up big action setpieces with a sly sense of humor.YOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way ofTREASURE PLANET
Even if Robert Louis Stevenson's children's classic Treasure Island begged for another remake, it didn't necessarily beg for a remake set in space. Disney's animated feature Treasure Planet seems to recognize this fact by ignoring it; once established, the setting pretty much drifts in the background without further comment. Set in a universe that owes as much to Ray Bradbury as to THE ASTONISHING DOCUMENTARY APOLLO 11 SHOOTS THE MOON Shutting down conspiracy theorists probably wasn’t high on director Todd Douglas Miller’s to-do list when he was making the documentary Apollo 11. So just consider it a bonus that his film about the first manned moon landing is so immersive that it feels like it’s happening in real-time on screen—and definitively un-faked. Apollo 11 doesn’t run through the usual grainy footage that THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's persona FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS Perhaps fitting for a movie about pals looking for sex without commitment, Friend With Benefits wants to have it both ways: It decries the “lies” of Katherine Heigl romantic comedies, yet follows the same script. It shuns the wuss-rock stylings of John Mayer, yet gooses up the soundtrack with a drippy solo acoustic version of “Boys Don’t Cry.” And it affects a cooler-than-thou IN THE UNNERVING SUN CHOKE, A SICK WOMAN SPREADS HER Sarah Hagan has had two memorably substantial roles in her career thus far—both on television, and both over a decade ago. She was the rigorously prim mathlete Millie on Freaks And Geeks, and played Amanda, one of the “potentials” in the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Since the early 2000s, Hagan’s mostly been relegated to guest shots and bit parts, but that should changeTHE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so that THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.THE AVIATOR
By all accounts, the making of Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was an Olympian undertaking, only slightly less difficult and logistically challenging than the Allied invasion of Normandy. Most mere mortals would take an extended break after such a mammoth effort, but Scorsese has leaped madly back into the fray with The Aviator, another sprawling, two-fisted, larger-than-life American epicTHE GRUDGE - FILM
Like so many Japanese innovations, the late-'90s genre known as J-horror took its time reaching the West, but now seems poised to become part of the fabric of everyday life. The Ring began the cycle in 2002, bringing American crowds into a remake of what was, in Japan and much of Asia, already a long-running franchise of horror films about a cursed videotape. The Grudge tries to doAIRPLANE! - FILM
Before Airplane! came along in 1980, the anything-goes vaudeville aesthetic had more or less died off with the Marx Brothers, which might explain why much of a generation grew up thinking the disaster-movie spoof was the funniest ever made. Not the best comedy ever made, of course, but considered in bulk, nothing could really top the sheer quantity of laughs being offered, even whenINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only follows PLEASE, SOMEONE INTRODUCE DWAYNE JOHNSON TO BETTER DIRECTORS Please, someone introduce Dwayne Johnson to better directors. Alex McLevy. 7/10/19 8:00AM. 371. 3. Screenshot: YouTube. On Monday, the announcement went out that Netflix would be picking up the tab for a new blockbuster thriller from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, called Red Notice. Co-starring Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, the film lookslike
RUN LOLA RUN
Especially since the rise of MTV and the emergence of rapid-fire editing, films have sacrificed substance for the sake of style. Run Lola Run, a new film by German director Tom Tykwer, smartly bypasses the artistic quandary: Rather than weigh substance versus style, Run Lola Run jettisons the former entirely. Franka Potente, the titular Lola, gets a phone call from criminal-boss flunky and THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TARANTINO WAS ONTO SOMETHING WHEN HE TOOK THAT SHOT AT When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Django Unchained a few years ago, he mentioned that the scenes involving the Ku Klax Klan were inspired, in part, by his imagining what it must have been like for the actors who wore Klansmans’ hoods in Birth Of A Nation. One of those visually impaired riders was played, uncredited, by the young John Ford, who actually holds his hood up so that THE WIZARD OF LIES RAISES MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNIE The Bernie Madoff story staggers the imagination: In the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, one man defrauded his family, friends, and thousands of investors for several billion dollars. Such an epic and tragic saga needs some strong characters to pull it off, and director Barry Levinson and Robert De Niro make a somewhat admirable attempt. But it turns out that Bernie Madoff may be too SUNDANCE WINNER NANCY TOYS WITH OUR SYMPATHY FOR A The “unlikable female protagonist” subgenre finds a worthy new entry in Nancy, the Sundance-winning feature debut of talented writer-director Christina Choe. In an emotionally ambiguous, formally restrained tale of intentionally mistaken identity, Nancy sets its title character up as a lost, lonely woman in an alienating world, then pushes the audience’s sympathy for her as far as it can go.STAR TREK - FILM
Mothballed early this decade by a string of increasingly unpopular TV series and films, the venerable Star Trek series hasn’t so much been pulled out of storage with this new film as dusted off, broken down to its most basic parts, streamlined, and sent blazing off at an acute angle from its original course. Directed by J.J. Abrams—it’s his second feature directorial effort after helpingINSOMNIA - FILM
A gimmick is only a gimmick if it's in service of nothing but its own gimmickry. The big twist in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento–a thriller that unfolds in reverse chronological order–is that the gimmick suddenly melts away, revealing a deeply considered and profound statement about the slippery nature of memory and the human capacity for self-deception. So it only followsDESPICABLE ME
Until the “creep + orphans = happy family” formula starts demanding abrupt, unconvincing character mutations, Despicable Me is a giddy joy. It takes place in a world seemingly inspired by The Incredibles—the superheroes are missing, but the cartoon physics, crazy devices, and outsized conquer-the-world plots are all in place, ready to set up big action setpieces with a sly sense of humor.YOU, THE LIVING
Finished right on time for the new millennium, Roy Andersson’s 2000 opus Songs From The Second Floor captured the apocalyptic mood of the world’s deepest pessimists with mordant black comedy and mind-blowing cinematic tableaux. Andersson’s attitude was so bleak—and the lumpen souls on display so pallid, dreary, and hopeless—that it manifested as gallows humor, his artful way ofTREASURE PLANET
Even if Robert Louis Stevenson's children's classic Treasure Island begged for another remake, it didn't necessarily beg for a remake set in space. Disney's animated feature Treasure Planet seems to recognize this fact by ignoring it; once established, the setting pretty much drifts in the background without further comment. Set in a universe that owes as much to Ray Bradbury as to THE ASTONISHING DOCUMENTARY APOLLO 11 SHOOTS THE MOON Shutting down conspiracy theorists probably wasn’t high on director Todd Douglas Miller’s to-do list when he was making the documentary Apollo 11. So just consider it a bonus that his film about the first manned moon landing is so immersive that it feels like it’s happening in real-time on screen—and definitively un-faked. Apollo 11 doesn’t run through the usual grainy footage that THE BEST MOVIES OF 1997 Hindsight is 20/20. Does it get sharper when the distance between then and now is 20 years? The A.V. Club wasn’t putting together best-of lists in 1997, so it’s impossible to know how this retroactive ranking of the year’s movies might compare with one compiled by the staff at the time—especially since that staff has changed dramatically in the interim. TRADING PLACES / COMING TO AMERICA In 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy plays a pauper who becomes a prince of finance. In 1988's Coming To America, he plays a prince who masquerades as a pauper to find his ideal wife. Both films cleaned up at the box office during Murphy's Reagan-era heyday, and both let director John Landis channel Frank Capra. Trading Places taps into the farcical prankster side of Capra's persona FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS Perhaps fitting for a movie about pals looking for sex without commitment, Friend With Benefits wants to have it both ways: It decries the “lies” of Katherine Heigl romantic comedies, yet follows the same script. It shuns the wuss-rock stylings of John Mayer, yet gooses up the soundtrack with a drippy solo acoustic version of “Boys Don’t Cry.” And it affects a cooler-than-thou IN THE UNNERVING SUN CHOKE, A SICK WOMAN SPREADS HER Sarah Hagan has had two memorably substantial roles in her career thus far—both on television, and both over a decade ago. She was the rigorously prim mathlete Millie on Freaks And Geeks, and played Amanda, one of the “potentials” in the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Since the early 2000s, Hagan’s mostly been relegated to guest shots and bit parts, but that should change* The A.V. Club
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Reviews Reviews The Best Of The 2010s For Our Consideration _JOJO RABBIT_ IS NOT THE NEW _LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL_Jojo Rabbit
Photo: Searchlight PicturesMike D'Angelo
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_This article reveals major plot points from_ Jojo Rabbit_ and _Life Is Beautiful_, including discussion of both films’ endings._ ------------------------- I have a hard time disliking _Jojo Rabbit__.
_Usually that construction signifies somewhat grudging admiration, but in this case it’s meant more literally: I genuinely and strongly dislike _Jojo Rabbit, _but I have quite a hard time doing so. That’s not because disdain puts me in the minority. Hell, the list of highly acclaimed movies that do little or nothing for me is longer than Schindler’s (but does _not _include _Schindler’s List_). Rather, the
problem is that my argument against _Jojo_—which is up for six Academy Awards tonight, including Best Picture, Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Adapted Screenplay, and Editing—sounds exactly like the argument that haters made against _Life Is Beautiful__
_21 years ago, when it, too, was nominated for multiple Oscars (winning for Foreign-Language Film, Score, and Roberto Benigni as Best Actor). Having defended the latter back in the day, I now feel a bit hypocritical. Have I become what I behold? Both films risk ruffling feathers by taking an unconventionally (albeit not exclusively) lighthearted approach to Nazi atrocities. _Jojo Rabbit _concerns a 10-year-old Hitler Youth member (Roman Griffin Davis) whose love for the Führer (played as a purely comic figure by writer-director Taika Waititi) gets tested when he discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their house; its tone of gentle buffoonery is generally similar to that of previous Waititi films like _Eagle Vs. Shark__ _and _Hunt For
The Wilderpeople_
_._
In a similarly counterintuitive vein, _Life Is Beautiful _imagines a devoted, fun-loving father, Guido (played as a purely comic figure by writer-director Benigni), who tries to shield his young son from the horrors of the concentration camp they’ve been taken to by pretending that everything around them is actually part of the kid’s elaborate birthday present. Inevitably, viewers who can’t get on these movies’ wavelength wind up appalled rather than charmed. Thing is, though, I was never charmed by _Life Is Beautiful_,_ _a film I eventually concluded may be great in spite of Benigni’s concerted effort to make it terrible. Should I give _Jojo _the same benefit ofthe doubt?
Nah. Waititi definitely knows what he’s doing; I just think he does it poorly. For one thing, he’s imposed broadly satirical comedy onto material that by all accounts (I haven’t read the book myself) isn’t remotely funny. That’s not inherently a bad thing—Stanley Kubrick turned Peter George’s deadly serious _Red Alert _into the black-comedy masterpiece _Dr. Strangelove_,
and nobody now complains (if anyone ever did) that it trivializes the threat of accidental nuclear devastation. But Kubrick went for the jugular, gleefully exaggerating everything—he even tricked George C. Scott into an uncharacteristically broad performance, using what he’d told Scott were merely “warm-up” takes in the final cut—and dispensing with even the slightest hint of pathos. Waititi, on the other hand, wants to portray Adolf Hitler as a goofy imaginary friend who says, “Correctamundo!” but also depict the horrifying moment that sees young Jojo recognize his mother’s distinctive shoes on the feet of a hanging corpse. The movie keeps needlessly reminding us of its underlying gravity, which only makes its silliness feelobscene.
Jojo RabbitPhoto: Searchlight Pictures _Life Is Beautiful_,_ _by contrast, goes out of its way to avoid disturbing images or upsetting situations, even though its second half is set entirely inside a Nazi concentration camp. Consequently, some critics accused it of sanitizing the Holocaust, transforming the deaths of millions into a bizarrely feel-good story about one father’s quest to protect his young son’s psyche. Actually, it’s even worse than that, viewed at face value: The film literally turns extermination into a _game_,_ _as Guido tells his son that they’re taking part in a competition for which first prize is an honest-to-goodness tank. One must amass 1,000 points, he explains, in order to win; said points are allotted for strategic maneuvers (e.g., successfully hiding from the players who wear uniforms and yell nonsense) and/or deducted for strategic errors (e.g., crying, wanting to see Mommy, asking for a snack). Remarks about human crematoria are casually dismissed as psychological gamesmanship on the part of aggressive players. The film’s most memorable scene finds Guido translating a Nazi guard’s dictates into Italian, pretending that they’re the game’s rules.Advertisement
In and of itself, that’s more creative and thought-provoking than Waititi’s cuddly child’s-eye Hitler, who serves only as a variation on such tired tropes as the grandma who improbably spews profanity. _Life Is Beautiful _depicts the Holocaust as an event so unimaginable that it only makes sense as a nonsense game—one like Bill Watterson’s “Calvinball,” say, in which the rules are constantly changing at the whim of whoever’s in power—and, more crucially, so horrific that it could only be endured by those who opted to pretend that it simply wasn’t happening. Guido is trying to convince himself, too, not just the boy. This is made clear in the film’s ostensibly sunny first half, during which Guido becomes obsessed with German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory that human beings self-construct our own versions of reality. This starts off as a series of jokes about Guido attempting to will things into happening by performing what looks like a huckster’s “magic” gesture: hands waving in circles with fingers wiggling. By the time that gesture reappears in the camp, however, Guido has already mentally transformed Dachau into Disneyland. The movie’s true subject is neither paternal love nor sacrifice but the human capacityfor denial.
Roberto Benigni and his two Oscars Photo: PA Images/Getty Granted, one can credibly refute this interpretation simply by pointing at Benigni himself. Should Waititi win Best Adapted Screenplay tonight, I feel confident he won’t make his way to the podium by clambering along the backs of people’s seats, as Benigni did when _Life Is Beautiful _won the Foreign-Language Oscar. The Italian filmmaker’s apparently irrepressible exuberance makes it nearly impossible to perceive him as the driving force behind a disturbing parable cleverly disguised as inspirational hooey, and theonly two movies
he’s
since directed
in no way suggest a subversive genius at work. It’s entirely possible that Benigni fully intended to make something that I’d find deeply misguided, if not outright offensive, and just stumbled onto a scenario that happens to be far more interesting and rewarding when viewed from another angle. In that case, it seems unfair to blame Waititi for failing to get equally lucky. With a little more effort, maybe I can construct a disturbing subtext for _Jojo Rabbit_’s finale, in which Jojo and Elsa celebrate the end of the war by doing self-consciously wacky dance moves to the anachronistic accompaniment of David Bowie’s “Heroes” (German-language version)—a triumphant note that currently strikes me as far too glib, given its temporal proximity to Jojo finding his mother’s body hanging lifeless in a public square. Deep down, though, I’m still convinced that _Life Is Beautiful _is stealthily nightmarish by design, despite the contradictory evidence that Benigni has all but assaulted us with over the course of his life and career. One key scene rarely gets mentioned, perhaps because it’s so starkly at odds with the rest of the movie: Toward the end, Guido, wandering the camp while carrying his sleeping son, encounters an enormous pile of corpses—the sole visual reminder we get of what’s actually happening in the camp, of what Guido’s strenuously ignoring. In theory, this moment should be as tonally incompatible as is the death of Jojo’s mother. But Benigni and his cinematographer, Tonino Delli Colli, shoot the sequence in a dreamlike fog (this fog is actually the very first thing we see, without any explanation whatsoever, when the film begins—hint hint), making it seem less real than the pseudo-benign banality with which it’s juxtaposed. Furthermore, the corpse pile is heavily stylized in a way that suggests an edgy art project rather than mass murder. So it’s no surprise when Guido immediately retreats to his fantasy world, later “saving” his son from being found by the Nazis by using his magic hand gesture. He’s deluded to the end. _Jojo Rabbit _offers nothing that’s even potentially so thorny. The film’s comedic and dramatic elements undermine rather than reinforce each other, because Waititi gives them equal weight and alternates between them; it’s as if he doesn’t trust the audience to make the necessary connections and inferences. Whereas _Life Is Beautiful_’s power resides in the juxtaposition between what Benigni shows us and what we know is going on outside of the frame—between what’s happening and what Guido _pretends_ is happening. That goes double for the film’s ostensibly happy (even schmaltzy) ending, with its jaunty march-style variation on composer Nicola Piovani’s Oscar-winning theme and its triumphant final freeze-frame. Mother and child, reunited at last, hug ecstatically. Neither one of them has the slightest clue that Dad is lying dead in an alleyway miles behind them. The kid, in fact, believes that he’s just won the contest, and that the American tank that liberated the camp is his prize. “We won!” he shouts repeatedly, thrusting both arms skyward in a victorious salute. “Yes, we won,” she replies, smiling happily. Nope, no dark irony there. Both _Jojo Rabbit _and _Life Is Beautiful _achieved crowd-pleaser status (and reaped, or may soon reap, Oscar glory) by reassuring us that goodness and light will prevail. Only one of them really means it.SHARE THIS STORY
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