Enlarge / Denis Villeneuve’s vision of Dune appears to be heated not by scorching desert suns but by a ton of Hollywood hotties. That’s one way to get the spice to flow. (credit: Warner Bros.) I left my first screening of Dune (2021) convinced that I would watch it again soon. For a film that […]
Enlarge / Oscar nominees Leslie Odom, Jr. and Cynthia Erivo co-star as a husband and wife who fear being separated by a warped time line in Needle in a Timestack, a new film from director John Ridley. (credit: Lionsgate) A happily married couple finds their life together threatened by a romantic rival who travels back […]
Daniel Craig returns one last time as 007. Everyone has their favorite incarnation of James Bond, Ian Fleming’s iconic British spy with an eye for the ladies, fast cars, cool gadgets, and a martini that’s shaken, not stirred. Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan have all brought their own distinctive […]
Kasady/Carnage vs. Brock/Venom: a comic book matchup for the ages… or so we’d hoped, up until we actually saw the film. [credit: Sony ] My favorite parts of underwhelming films come when on-screen characters say the insulting things we, the audience, are all thinking. Out of all the modern comic book-iverse characters to hand these […]
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Anthony McCoy, a visual artist who moves into the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood in Chicago. [credit: YouTube/Universal Pictures ] With thought-provoking films like Get Out and Us, writer/director Jordan Peele has already cemented his status as a master of smart, socially relevant modern horror. His influence is even broader as a producer, […]
Debuting exclusively in theaters on September 3, 2021. [credit: Marvel Studios ] If you want to know what direction Marvel’s post- Avengers superhero films are going, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a pretty clear indicator—and it’s an optimistic one at that. I had a blast watching Shang-Chi , which arrives exclusively […]
Guy (Ryan Reynolds) discovers that things inside his world look a lot different when you have special sunglasses. [credit: 20th Century Studios ] In video games and computer graphics, the concept of the “uncanny valley” can emerge once something approaches visual realism. The more a virtual character looks like a human, the more our brains […]
Enlarge / Don’t call it a reboot: Margot Robbie stars in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (credit: Warner Bros. ) Fan enthusiasm has been high leading up to the premiere of The Suicide Squad , James “Don’t Call It a Reboot” Gunn’s band-of-misfit-supervillains homage to the classic 1967 film The Dirty Dozen (among many other […]
Enlarge / Dev Patel stars as Gawain—nephew to King Arthur and an aspiring knight—in The Green Knight , filmmaker David Lowery’s mesmerizing adaptation of the 14th-century anonymous poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . (credit: A24 ) The tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, immortalized in a 14th-century anonymous poem, is among […]
A family on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly in Old , a new thriller from M. Night Shyamalan. Director M. Night Shyamalan has a well-known fondness for his signature surprise twist endings. When those twists work organically, we […]