Bombshell Lets Down Essential Perspectives With A Poor Movie

Based on the true stories regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault cases at Fox News, Bombshell chronicles a trio of individual stories each centered on a different woman (two of them being actual people, one of them being a fictional creation) working for Fox News, in-film narrator Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and newbie employee Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). Bombshell explores the work environment they reside in as well as the gradually increasing presence of a sexual harassment lawsuit (one spurred on by Gretchen Carlson) brewing against the network and its founder, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

There Are Few Upsides To Watching The Upside

Technically, The Upside is a remake of a 2012 French movie entitled The Intouchables that, for a while there, became the biggest foreign-language movie of all-time at the worldwide box office. Given how successful it was, an American remake of that French feature was basically inevitable. Remakes have a negative stink about them, but like any genre, they can be good when executed properly. Just look at that seemingly pointless Child's Play remake that ended up being a delight. But in executing this remake of The Intouchables, given the title The Upside, director Neil Burger has delivered essentially a cornball TV movie from the 1980s that somehow managed to show up in 2019 movie theaters. 

Destroyer Channels Green Room and Mikey & Nicky In Its Exquisitely Crafted Dark Tone

"We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us", so goes one of the most memorable lines from Magnolia and Destroyer is a crime thriller about a human being whose present-day circumstances are tormented by the past. Such a set-up, unsurprisingly, results in a grim movie that has little time for levity or hope, this is a bleak examination of a person not looking for redemption so much as a way to make the emotional pain stop, even for a moment. Such a pervasively mirthless affair won't be to everyone's liking, but me? I absolutely adored Destroyer, it's an absorbing movie that executes its dark tone with exquisite filmmaking that echoes the harrowing rawness found in Elaine May's Mikey & Nicky or Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room.

Aquaman Is 2018's Answer To G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. That's A Compliment.

Aquaman has been given a bum rap in American pop culture. Because Family Guy and The Big Bang Theory (the paragons of pop culture contemplation) made jokes saying Aquaman was stupid, that's been his reputation in the 21st-century pop culture landscape, which is a pity because of how much fun the character can be in properties like his "Outrageous!" portrayal in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Much to my delight, James Wan's Aquaman movie decides to eschew constantly apologizing for the weirdness of the character and his world and just embraces all the high-concept underwater absurdity that Aquaman could possibly get into, a choice worthy of a mighty Jason Momoa delivered "YEAH!".

Writer/Director Joel Edgerton Manages To Find Humanity To Accompany On-Screen Torment In Boy Erased

After his directorial debut, The Gift, proved to be a surprise success, Joel Edgerton decided to follow that project up with a classic sophomore directorial effort move: it was time to get serious. It was time to deliver an "artsy" motion picture that proved to the world that Edgerton was no one-trick pony, no, this was a guy who was capable of creating powerful art in addition to fun genre fare. The result of this drive to deliver a more serious-minded feature is Boy Erased, which really aims for the full nine years in terms of dark storytelling material by covering the experience of a gay teenager going to a conversion camp designed to "correct" his sexuality.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties Is An Exceptionally Fun Ode To Punk Rock And Cosmic Weirdness

One of the movies A24 brought to premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival was the new John Cameron Mitchell directorial effort How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Arriving with oodles of hype, the feature debuted to mixed reviews, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone involved in the production considering it was such a strange entity that wasn't going to be for everyone's tastes. Unfortunately, A24 really seemed to have been taken aback by this response and it caused the films domestic theatrical release to constantly get delayed until it got dumped at the end of May 2018 in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it theatrical release.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer Slaughters Normalcy With It's Depraved Farcical Storytelling. That's A Compliment.

If you saw 2016's excellent dark comedy The Lobster, then you're fully aware how much writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos loves to weave tales heavy on weirdness and people committing ever-escalating acts of depravity in the service of an extended metaphor. He keeps that spirit very much alive for his newest movie The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is akin to The Lobster as well as last year's The Square in terms of being a dark comedy that keeps daring the audience to look away from the various hideous acts occuring on-screen. So utterly unconventional is The Killing of a Sacred Deer that I imagine writers Yorgo Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou started their first writing session with this simple statement:

I Do Declare That The Beguiled Is a Mighty Fine New Effort From Sofia Coppola!

We've had a lot of movies over the past century or so that have dealt with the dramatically potent theme of normal people being forced to do ghastly things in order to survive in a wartime setting. The concept being revisited so many times is understandable given what a thought-provoking idea it is and how constantly relevant it is given the permanent presence of war in every society in the world. Such an idea gets re-contextualized again for Sofia Coppola's newest motion picture The Beguiled, a remake of a 1971 film that starred Clint Eastwood, which looks to the Civil War as a backdrop for what happens when seven ordinary women are faced with the prospect of having to do the unspeakable to survive.

Prepared To Be Floored By The Mesmerizing Romance And Unique Spirit Of Moulin Rouge!

I wonder what it must have been like to be on the set of Moulin Rouge!, being directed by Baz Luhrmann and trying to make sense of what he was crafting here. The dude had made two films prior to Moulin Rouge!, and while I haven't seen those two initial features from Luhrmann, it's pretty clear they aren't exact copies of the incredibly one-of-a-kind aesthetic that Moulin Rouge! is reliant on, one that is very much informed by elements that get added into a movie during its post-production like editing. One can't help but ponder what was going on in the actor's minds as they acted out scenes that were going to have their own unique rhythm and pacing that could only be fully appreciated once the movie was fully completed.

Dev Patel Is Living On The Inside, Roaring Like A Lion

What an odd puzzle of a movie we have here. Lion starts off strong and finishes in a similarly satisfying manner, with both sections of the movie relying on some extremely well-done poignancy that tugs right at your heartstrings. But in between those opening and closing 10-minute or so segments is a messy movie with sporadic moments of goodness trying to breathe amidst an overly busy screenplay that's trying to shove too many real-life events into all too short of a running time. Looking at Lion as a whole, those opening and closing scenes likely resonate all the more because of how inconsistent a lot of the film as a whole.

Paddington Is A Charming Tale With Wit And Heart To Spare

Well, color me more than a tad bit surprised that Paddington is an out-and-out charmer of a movie! What looked like yet another Alvin And The Chipmunks knock-off in its marketing turned out to be something genuinely special, a sweet tale exploring the experience of a foreign individual trying to adapt to the customs and culture of a new country. Unlike, say, Million Dollar Arm or something, the fellow whose actually trying to adjust to unfamiliar surroundings is the lead of this particular story, meaning we, the audience, get to really dive into how such an experience would affect a persons psyche.

The Secret In Their Eyes Review

Movies like The Secret In Their Eyes tend to drive me right up the wall, simply because such features squander a plot that one could easily see being good, even excellent, in the right hands. A different screenwriter, someone else behind the camera, just something else to deviate it from the final product playing in over 2300 theaters across the country right now. Granted, what we're left with isn't something that'll join Manos: The Hand Of Fate on the list of "Worst Movies Ever", but it's fairly obvious more could have been done with the cast and storyline.