Young Anna (Galatea Bellugi), intense and charismatic in the manner of another teenaged French seer, reports that Mary has imparted to her a message calling for the building of a church and caring for the world’s poor
A tense, terse drama that plunges us headlong and handheld into the high-risk world of the space race in the 1960s, the film spares few moments for reflection or reverie
The Hate U Give takes time to focus on the nuances of Starr’s life, on the ways Williamson has split her consciousness, on the effort of code-switching, on the layers of self that Starr must sort through in everyday interactions
This alien being, which helpfully calls itself Venom, is a fairly terrifying creation: a many-fanged, slobbery, snake-tongued monster that loves to eat people’s heads
Each beat of this plays out with exquisite delicacy, as does the exchange where the crook lays out, with exacting detail, how he’d rob this diner if it were a bank — and then takes it all back, letting her think he was joking
The filmmakers capture Honnold’s 2016 and 2017 attempts to complete the first “free solo” climb of these granite cliffs, and the suspense is thrilling, agonizing, perhaps indecent
At times, Green’s film feels too familiar, exploring what we already know — cops can be dirty and may retaliate if they’re crossed
Footage of Studio life — the lavish lights, the Broadway-style props and performance numbers, the heaving mass of beautiful people — plays here mostly in chaotic montage, with few shots related to the one coming next
The idea practically sells itself: Kevin Hart has to take night classes to get his high school degree, and Tiffany Haddish plays his suffer-no-bullshit teacher
Don’t expect a happy ending in these films.
To fall in love with A Star Is Born is to embrace these paradoxes and, to quote a song Gaga sings in the film, go “off the deep end” and submerge oneself “far from the shallow.”
As her marriage opens up, and Colette begins to take lovers of her own, Knightley summons up a moving sense of both relief and recklessness
The cameras aren’t even there when the kids officially present their projects, but the filmmakers still wring the big day for all the drama they can, putting off as long as possible the revelation of whether any of their subjects win
Ultimately a story about brotherhood, friendship and the insecurity of life in a violent place, the film injects a sweetness and innocence into the genre, mostly through one stellar performance by John C. Reilly
Too bad, then, that even Laguna’s input doesn’t get to the heart of Jett’s essence, as Bad Reputation comes off more as a fanboy’s declaration of reverence to the queen rather than an interrogation of one of the most iconic women in music
The film stars LaKeith Stanfield as a telemarketer climbing a corrupt corporate ladder.
… After a somewhat compelling hour suggesting all the reasons that Borden might be willing to kill, Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass tantalize with the possibility of their subject’s innocence
Despite the efforts of Dinklage and Fanning, both always pleasant enough to watch, and Morano’s keen eye — witness how she rarely puts both Del and Grace together in one frame — neither character really comes to life
Radner narrates, in a way, through her own audio diaries, plus some snippets of interviews and judicious excerpts from the audiobook of her perfectly titled — and just-barely posthumous — memoir, It’s Always Something
It is to Hawke’s credit that he has invested what clout he has gathered in his industry into this study of an artist who never gathered much clout at all — and that the resulting film has the warm, weary rhythms of Foley’s own songs
There’s a sense that Fogelman … has been inspired in part by the broken narratives of Charlie Kaufman, as the first 10 minutes of this film feature a story-within-a-story meta fake-out with Jackson as himself, narrating the action of a screenplay written by forlorn drunk Will (Isaac)
Despite the killing-spree craziness of its final reels, much of the film is a how-the-kids-live-now potboiler, replete with guileless dirty talk and immense bedroom windows that seem to have been installed with peeping in mind
