With a name less like a one-two punch and more like a little poem of introduction, Keanu Reeves has always been distinctive. The true test of a Movie Star is the ability to be known by only one name—Bruce, George, Leo, Johnny—and there is no name more evocative than “Keanu”. Like it’s wearer it is at once cool and mysterious, singular and offbeat. Keanu—the name and Movie Star—has such presence in pop culture that he can carry an entire movie as a concept. Keanu Reeves is one of the most enduring actors of the contemporary era, and a celebrity who has reached near-mythic proportions, universally beloved and more admired than ever, thanks to some post-John Wick revisionism. And where so many of his fellow Movie Stars have stumbled and lost stature, Reeves remains, the coolest, most unknowable, most untouchable—the last great Movie Star.Continue reading “Keanu Reeves: The Last Great Movie Star”
Sherlock goes off the rails
SPOILERS
After a series opener in which Sherlock traded its mystery status for soap, the second episode of series four, “The Lying Detective”, doubles down on the new soap operatic direction of the show and delivers even more antics and heavy-handed emotional beats. It’s not the worst decision to explore other facets of a character, such as Sherlock’s drug addiction, which actually matters in this episode, but for Sherlock, the show, the tonal shift has been so sudden and so hard it’s jarring. And it doesn’t quite sit right on a show about a man whose emotions are famously repressed and take a back seat to his analytical skills. That leads the show to feel excessive and even sloppy, as everything careens around an essentially unstable axis.
Green Room is brutal, relentless tension
Filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier made a splash in 2013 with Blue Ruin, a funny-sad but brutal film in the revenge-thriller vein about a man seeking revenge who is wholly unequipped to seek revenge. Saulnier follows up Blue Ruin with Green Room—sensing a theme here—a film I was bitterly upset about missing at TIFF last fall. But Green Room is now in theaters, and I finally saw it, and holy shit, it made me sick to my stomach in the best possible way. Green Room ratchets up the tension and the horror over ninety minutes until the possibility of puking starts to feel like sweet relief.Continue reading “Green Room is brutal, relentless tension”
The 5th Wave is terrible, but also COMPLETELY INSANE
I didn’t have high hopes for The 5th Wave going into it. It looked like a Hunger Games rip-off, with your requisite YA dystopia and obligatory love triangle, and I was preparing myself for the worst. But then the movie began and though The 5th Wave is not a good movie, it’s so fucking DARK and BIZARRE that I kind of came around to it, in the end. I don’t recommend spending your money on it, but should you catch it on cable or Netflix someday, it’s worth watching as an artifact of insanity. It’s the craziest of the YA dystopia movies by far, taking the premise of “child murder as entertainment” to new, un-dreamed-of heights.Continue reading “The 5th Wave is terrible, but also COMPLETELY INSANE”
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 deflates like a bad souffle
HERE BE SPOILERS
Katniss Everdeen is the Girl On Fire, the survivor of multiple brutal televised child murder competitions, and generally a steely, boss bitch. She’s become the figurehead of a revolution, and after spending the previous movie starring in political attack ads, this time she’s out on the streets, trying to commit more murder and watching other people’s political attack ads. She spends most of the final chapter of her story staring vacantly into the middle distance as other people explain things to her, or tell her what to do next, and occasionally she pauses to listen to two unworthy boys she does not seem particularly interested in argue over which one of them should win her at the end of the movie. You know, like a prize.Continue reading “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 deflates like a bad souffle”
Angelina Jolie’s experimental, trying By The Sea
Angelina Jolie’s third movie as a director, By The Sea, is like a curio cabinet. The cabinet itself is very well crafted and exquisite to look at, and inside are many interesting things. But really, no matter how pretty it is, all you’re doing is pawing through some junk. The film, which is also written by Jolie, is beautiful to look at and it contains some interesting ideas and turns, but the story is so thin it’s almost non-existent. The result is an uneven film that tests viewers’ patience as holes in the narrative are filled with unhappy stares and beauty shots of the Maltese coastline (standing in for the south of France).Continue reading “Angelina Jolie’s experimental, trying By The Sea”
Steve Jobs: Portrait of the Artist as an Asshole
After much sturm and drang getting it to the big screen, the Aaron Sorkin-penned biopic Steve Jobs finally in wide release, where it face-planted for reasons ranging from “Michael Fassbender isn’t a star” to “everyone just spent their money on The Martian and they’re done with movies for the month”. (That second one has a lot more to do with it than anything else.) It’s too bad Steve Jobs was ever taken out of the arthouse, its natural habitat, because it’s actually a really good movie that doesn’t deserve to be remembered as a failure just because general audiences weren’t into it. It’s an excellent character drama featuring stellar performances from Fassbender and Kate Winslet, and if Aaron Sorkin seems like the kind of guy who imagines he’s the besieged lord of the castle of good taste, well. It doesn’t make his dialogue any less entertaining.Continue reading “Steve Jobs: Portrait of the Artist as an Asshole”
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