Keep The Change Creates An Engaging Romantic-Comedy By Treating People on the Autism Spectrum Like People

I've been waiting for years for a movie like Keep the Change. As an avid lover of cinema who resides on the Autism spectrum, I've been dying to see more movies with characters on the Autism spectrum who actually seem like real people instead of variations on Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper. Aside from the rare burst of Autistic authenticity seen in figures like Christian Bale's character in The Big Short, it's hard for me to recognize any sense of reality in conventional pop culture approaches to people on the Autism spectrum. This unfortunate trend has left me waiting for eons for a motion picture that actually tackles people on the Autism spectrum in a thoughtful manner and finally, the wait has paid off with the arrival of Keep the Change.

The Outstanding Cinematography Of Foxtrot Alone Makes This A Movie Worth Seeing

The camera is constantly on the move in Foxtrot, which isn't normally a visual characteristic you'd imagine would be applied to a quiet drama about coping with past transgressions. Many similar films go for a restrained style of camerawork that can work beautifully for their specific stories but who's to say the opposite approach also can't work like gangbusters? One size does not fit all, as they say, and Foxtrot demonstrates just how fitting more active camerawork can be to certain small-scale stories about human grief and remorse. Going for this approach means Foxtrot gets to have some truly remarkable cinematography that serves as an outstanding visual compliment to its thoughtful father/son story.

Gemini Is Visually Engrossing But Less So On A Narrative Level

Gemini is one of those movies that's really darn good right up until it isn't. Let that not detract from its best qualities and it has quite a few, it's first two-thirds, maybe even first three-fourths, are a slickly produced homage to classic noir movies that has writer/director Aaron Katz putting his own modern spin on this well-worn staple of cinematic storytelling. Gemini is good at drumming up mystery and intrigue that it's a pity it can't stick the landing and manage to deliver a resolution that feels like a satisfying pay-off to all the build-up. But before we get to the finale, let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, or so I'm told!) and see what kind of story Gemini intends to tell.

Disposable And Generic Are The Name of The (Video) Game For Tomb Raider

It's been 15 years since the last time Lara Croft got a movie adaptation, so it's about high time for a reboot according to Hollywood studio executives. After all, we got a Hitman reboot just eight years after the first time they tried to turn that video game into a movie, so MGM/Warner Bros/GK Films have been practically dragging their feet at getting this character back onto the silver screen. Alicia Vikander is now playing the role once inhabited by Angelina Jolie and the resulting quality of this new film, called Tomb Raider, is noticeably better than the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider film from 2001, though that's probably the highest piece of praise I can offer it.

The Last Movie Star Traps Burt Reynolds In An Overly Conventional Tale

Burt Reynolds has been such a prominent figure of American cinema for so long now that it's easy to see an emotionally affecting movie being made out of Reynolds taking a wistful look at his career. But The Last Movie Star is not the thoughtful career retrospective Reynolds deserves, instead being something more akin to that dreadful first Expendables movie than Unforgiven in terms of quality. Writer/director Adam Rifkin delivers a story that's aiming for thoughtfulness but ends up being far too conventional and surface-level for its own good, with its most memorable traits being distracting oddball traits of the project, most notably in that Burt Reynolds is kind of sort of playing himself here.

An Assortment of Talented Actors Can't Save Gringo From It's Messy Script

Gringo is trying to be something different. Writers Anthony Tambakis & Matthew Stone and first-time feature film director Nash Edgerton clearly want Gringo to be a dark comedy occasionally interrupted by brief bits of action that has a glib view of the morality of the rich and powerful and has a sad-sack everyman protagonist that Jimmy Stewart would have played once upon a time. That's an unorthodox mixture of elements to put into one movie and that audacious spirit is to be admired. But in executing such a unique concoction, Gringo, unfortunately, winds up as a misfire, commendable artistic intentions can't mitigate the tiresome scattered nature of this project. 

Season Two of A Series of Unfortunate Events Excels In Production Design But Struggles With Tone

Heading into he ten-episode long season two of Series of Unfortunate Events, my big question for this TV show was how they would juggle the programs previously established heavily comedic tone with the darker books they were about to adapt. Just like Harry Potter, those Series of Unfortunate Events books got more complex and bleak as they went on and trying to merge that aesthetic with the joke-heavy Wes Anderson meets Tim Burton style of the show was gonna be a tricky proposition. Interestingly, having now seen the entire second season (which took me nearly two months to complete because I'm the worst binge watcher ever), I'm not sure if they did fully succeed in organically merging the two tones of these individual properties, but they did manage to make an entertaining second season nonetheless.

Isle of Dogs Is A Very Very Good Boy And Deserves A Belly Rub

One of the many pieces of connective tissue between the assorted directorial efforts of Wes Anderson is the element of families, Wes Anderson loves to explore complex, typically fractured, family dynamics. Whether it's the two brothers who lead Bottle Rocket, the expansive Tenenbaum clan or Mr. Fox and his kin, Anderson is fascinated by the storytelling possibilities offered up by complicated families. It's a recurring narrative pattern of his that has served him well in the past, but he's been eschewing it in his most recent works, first in The Grand Budapest Hotel and again in his newest feature Isle of Dogs. Both of these movies are superb works that indicate Anderson works just fine as a filmmaker without the aid of family dynamics in the stories he tells.

First Match Engagingly Wrestles With A Fractured Father/Daughter Relationship

The world of wrestling hasn't been anywhere near as prominent in cinema as it's sports cousin boxing, but it's still a common sight to see in pieces of cinema. Olivia Newman leaps to the world of feature films by helming the recent Netflix feature First Match, the newest entry in the wrestling movie subgenre. For her first time behind the camera on a feature film, she expands on a 2010 short film also entitled First Match and tells the tale of a troubled High Schooler named Monique (Elvire Emanuelle) whose constantly shifting between different foster families to live with and getting into trouble at school on a similarly regular basis.

The Death of Stalin Finds Humor In Real-Life Horrors

"How can you run and plot at the same time?"

After eight years, writer/director Armando Iannucci has returned to the world of feature films (he's been busy the last few years working on the highly acclaimed HBO TV show Veep) with The Death of Stalin. Like his 2009 film In The Loop, The Death of Stalin is a dark farce comedy depicting people in positions of noteworthy political power acting scummy in the name of personal gain. Instead of coming off as merely reheated leftovers of In The Loop though, The Death of Stalin takes this basic concept and clearly charts its own terrain. This is a film with its own distinct personality to its name, one that aids greatly in making The Death of Stalin as highly humorous as it is.

Ready Player One Is, For Better And For Worse, A Traditional Action Blockbuster

After a whole decade of being absent from the realm of American blockbuster cinema, director Steven Spielberg returns to the genre he helped bring into existence with Ready Player One, an adaptation of a 2011 novel penned by Ernest Cline. Given just what a tremendous track record Spielberg has with blockbuster fare (I'd personally say his only two real misses in that subgenre would be Temple of Doom and The Lost World), the idea of him returning to rollicking escapism science-fiction blockbusters sounds like a winning prospect, though the excerpts I've read from the Ready Player One book (which, for full context, I've never read in full) did make the source material he was adapting seem more creepy than exciting, thus diluting my excitement for this newest Spielberg fetaure immensely.

Relying Solely On One-Note Gags Being Run Into The Ground Is A Bad Move For Game Over Man!

Workaholics is a television program that ran for seven seasons on Comedy Central, with it's run garnering high levels of critical acclaim. A large number of my friends adore the show and especially enjoyed the performances from the three lead actors on it. Having not seen the program myself, I can not offer my own two cents on Workaholics, I can only say that everyone I've spoken to that has seen it loves the show and its trio of leads. I bring up the positive reception garnered by Workaholics among my friends and colleagues because the new movie, entitled Game Over, Man!, it's three lead actors have starred in and wrote is absolutely awful and I always feel gross just writing wall-to-wall negativity. Making movies is a hard process, as is the process of landing any kind of acting work, so some notes of positive reception towards other pieces of art stemming from the people behind Game Over, Man! feels in order.

Death Wish Is An Ineptly Made As It's Lead Performance Is Dreadful

I can think of numerous ways you could remake Death Wish as an entertaining movie in 2018, but the actual Death Wish remake we got from director Eli Roth earlier this month is the complete opposite of the best way to approach remaking this 1974 action film. The premise for this new take on Death Wish is set in modern-day Chicago with Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) as a doctor who lives a happy life with his family consisting of wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and a daughter, Jordan (Camila Morrone), who is about to head off to college. Paul's chef character flaw in the eyes of the movie is him being a sissy, as demonstrated by him not only refusing to beat up a foul-mouthed attendant at his daughter's soccer game but also letting his wife stand up for him in this argument. What a loser! 

Unsane Is Another High-Quality Thriller Effort From Director Steven Soderbergh (SPOILERS WITHIN!)

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR UNSANE BELOW

While I mentioned in my review of The Informant! that a number of Steven Soderbergh's most famous movies revolve around comedic crime capers, for me personally, I think my favorite Soderbergh mode might be when he decides to go into the thriller genre. He's made a number of forays into this genre in this decade, specifically, Contagion in 2011, a terrific sweeping look at how a disease affects numerous different individuals and Side Effects in 2013, a twisty-turny thriller with great performances from Jude Law and Rooney Mara. The newest example of how good Steven Soderbergh is when he's working in the world of thrillers is the motion picture Unsane.

Robots And Monsters Fighting Aren't Enough To Keep Pacific Rim: Uprising From Being Underwhelming

I loved the first Pacific Rim from 2013. I know some didn't care for it because they thought it was too goofy or messy, but I thought it worked like gangbusters. Guillermo Del Toro's ode to the monster movies that shaped his entire cinematic sensibility was full of lovingly rendered awe-inspiring imagery and an uplifting message of unity that resonated deeply with me. The prospect of returning to this universe was a tantalizing one for me, especially since Del Toro publicly said he had plenty of ideas for follow-up stories in this universe. We've finally gotten a sequel in the form of Pacific Rim: Uprising, though not with Del Toro either writing or directing the project (he only produces) and boy does that make all the difference in the world in terms of quality.

Thoroughbreds Expertly Uses A Grim Tone And Great Performances To Make A Memorable Film

Something I've really liked seeing in recent movies about teenagers is interesting subversions of typical movie teenager stereotypes. I have no clue if this is accurate or not, but the past few years feel like they've been populated by movies about teenagers made by adults who never get to see humanistic portraits of who they were as teenagers. This means numerous unique visions of the teenage existence have managed to come forth in recent years, many of them in the form of character-centric drama/comedy hybrids. Thoroughbreds is yet another entry in the canon of unique modern-day teenager-oriented fare, but it's a different animal tonally and in terms of what kind of themes & characters it wants to explore compared to its brethren.

The Hurricane Heist Is Nowhere Near As Much Fun As It Should Be

The trailer for The Hurricane Heist is a work of art. So cheesy it should come with a warning for the lactose intolerant, the trailer tosses out one gloriously cheesy line of dialogue after another at the viewer while being accompanied by the pulsating rhythm of The Scorpions Rock You Like A Hurricane. By the time the trailer concludes, right after it's seemingly ended, with massive on-screen text flying towards the screen talking about how much money the bank robbers have stolen, you'd be nuts to not have high hopes for what kind of lunacy the actual Hurricane Heist movie could deliver. Alas, this is one of those motion pictures that were better off as a trailer, way better in fact.

A Wrinkle In Time Tends to Stumble But It Also Tends To Inspire Mightily

The best part about A Wrinkle In Time is that it certainly maintains the weirdness of the source material it's adapting. Those worried that Madeleine L'Engle's original novel would be translated to the silver screen with all of it's more unusual tendencies ironed out can relax, director Ava DuVernay's adaptation of this book certainly does not reduce L'Engle's work to being a Hunger Games or Harry Potter knock-off. In the process of adapting such an unorthodox piece of literature, you get a movie that has a far bolder vision than your run-of-the-mill live-action family movie and thoroughly successful elements to its name while also having its fair share of stumbles along the way.

Red Sparrow Is An Empty Spy Thriller With Only A Dark Tone And Poor Treatment of Women To Its Name

CONTENT WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS AND DISCUSSIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ARE BELOW 

A dour tone is not a bad element for a movie to have. It can be a quite useful element in fact! Just look at classic movies like Bicycle Thieves, Ordet or Au Hasard Balthazar, all motion pictures with a somber atmosphere that make that downtrodden aesthetic because it suits the story they're telling. A well-done bleak movie can be incredibly powerful to watch, but on the other hand, a film that mistakes the act of being grim for being inherently contemplative is one that can get tiring to watch awful quickly. Red Sparrow, the newest collaboration between director Francis Lawrence and Jennifer Lawrence after their work together on the Hunger Games sequels, is very much one of those movies that doesn't know how to properly use its solemn tone.