Revenge Refutes Cinematic Conventions In Impressive Style

CW: Discussions of sexual assault

An Inspirational Historical Figure Gets A Cookie-Cutter But Agreeable Documentary With RBG

RBG is a biographical documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that's pretty much the short and simple of what it is. The feature, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, isn't something that has any shocking revelations about Ginsburg or what fueled her political career, it's all focused on the basic events of her life that one can find in any biographical book. Such life events are presented in a relatively standard way for a political documentary, there's not too much here in the editing or choices of visual accompaniments that stands out as particularly creative or innovative. That being said, the film's ace up its sleeve is that the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a truly inspiring one that you can't help but be invested in. The documentary about her may be run-of-the-mill in some respects but Ginsburg's real-life accomplishments certainly aren't.

Psychokinesis Makes For A Great (Allegedly) First Foray Into Superhero Movies For South Korean Cinema

Superhero movies have been a major fixture of American cinema for decades now but why should Americans have all the fun? Countries all over the world have produced their own superhero movies to varying degrees of success, including the Australian comedy Griff the Invisible, the Japanese comedy Zebraman and last year's Russain blockbuster Guardians, which features a dude who transforms into a giant bear. One of this year's newest example of a foreign superhero movie was Psychokinesis, the newest film from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho and a movie that has been called the first South Korean superhero movie (I have my doubts about that).

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.

Terminal Is All Weirdness All The Time And The Results Are Yawn-Inducing

Watching a piece of art prance around under the assumption that it's as strange as can be while actually being incredibly mundane and even boring is such an uncomfortable experience. It's like the cinematic version of listening to a guy at a party ramble on and on about his conspiracy theories about the Illuminati like he's cracked the code on how the world works when he's just regurgitating the same o'l nutty codswallop people with tinfoil hats have been saying for years. So it is with Terminal, a motion picture that fancies itself as something like a provocative slice of abnormality but it's really just predictable more often than not and ends up being the last thing any of these type of movies want to be called: lame.

Writer/Director Paul Schrader Delivers Something Equally Bleak And Unforgettable With First Reformed

If you were to do a film festival dedicated solely to films that serve as morose meditations on man's relationship with God, you'd have plenty of high-quality options to choose from. Ordet would certainly be an option, ditto for Au Hasard Balthazar. If you're looking for modern-day examples, well, let's totally throw Noah and Silence in the line-up too, those two movies never get enough love. Another recent movie that totally should be included in this theoretical film festival hails from director Paul Schrader and is entitled First Reformed. If you're wondering if First Reformed is bleak enough to join the likes of Au Hasard Balthazar, trust me, it most certainly is.

Book Club Is As Paint-By-Numbers As It Is Enjoyable

Book Club is a predictable affair in many respects, that much is true. But just as The Force Awakens took a plot similar to the original Star Wars and made it fresh by having it be performed by a talented diverse cast, so too does Book Club find ingenuity in its frequently paint-by-numbers plot by making sure its the rare American comedy to be headlined by four women over 60, all of whom are portrayed by acting legends. Yes, there are plenty derivative qualities to be found in here, but choosing to create a humanizing portrait of different types of women in this age range is certainly not one of them and having that kind of unique quality serve as the foundation for Book Club helps somewhat offset its formulaic tendencies.

The Tale Provides A Haunting Glimpse Into Coping With Repressed Memories of Abuse

Content Warning: Discussions of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Everyone puts a piece of themselves into the art they create, frequently in a subconscious manner. Your likes and dislikes in all sorts of areas of your life find a way to be subtly imprinted on the art you create, though many artists go even further this and create works that intentionally reflect their own lives and experiences. Jennifer Fox has gone this particular route in directing the motion picture The Tale, which chronicles her process of coming to terms with the fact that she was sexually abused as a child. Her cinematic depiction of this event is so tied into reality that the main character isn't given a pseudonym, lead actor Laura Dern simply plays Jennifer Fox herself (though there text at the start of the end credits that does clarify that certain names and locations have been changed for this motion picture).

The Exciting Potential In A New Interpretation of Fahrenheit 451 Is Never Fully Realized

Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 has received a pop culture resurgence in recent years thanks to its relevance to modern-day political issue, making it an inevitability that someone would try and take another swing at giving the novel a feature film adaptation (Francois Truffaut was the last person to tackle this material in a 1966 motion picture). Taking on this material now is Ramin Bahrani, director of one of 2015's most underappreciated titles 99 Homes, who writes and directs the film which stars Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon. Now that's a dynamite assemblage of creative artists! What a shame, then, that this new take on Fahrenheit 451 is more middling than captivating.

Solo: A Star Wars Story Is Better Than You'd Expect A Han Solo Origin Movie To Be But Still Suffers From A Derivative Nature

Ever since Harrison Ford shot his blaster through a mosquito alien in a seedy extra-terrestrial tavern in 1977, people have loved Han Solo. Why wouldn't we? He's got bad boy charm, he's got Harrison Ford's immense charm and he gets to serve as a grounded point-of-view in the original Star Wars as a guy who just doesn't care about all of this alien mumbo-jumbo in this universe. Even as a guy who thinks Han Solo is cooler than a morning on Hoth, do we really need a whole movie detailing the man's background? The fact that he carried an aura of mystery was always a big part of Han Solo's charm after all. Well, Disney marketers, er, master storytellers have seen fit to give us a Han Solo movie in the form of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the second stand-alone Star Wars Story following 2016's Rogue One.

Melissa McCarthy Can Only Do So Much To Improve The Scattershot Comedy of Life of The Party

The good news about Life of The Party is that's it's a drastic improvement in quality from the last two movies Ben Falcone has directed. Between his directorial debuted Tammy and The Boss, Falcone has not had a great (to put it gently) track record as a filmmaker, but he is showing growth as a director from film to film and that's most profoundly felt with Life of The Party. Unfortunately, even at its best, Life of The Party can only rise to the level of serviceable, but at least the clunky dark comedy that was the modus operandi of Falcone's prior two motion pictures has been replaced by frequently agreeable yuks revolving around an overly affectionate mother returning to college.

Once Deadpool 2 Get Rolling, It's A Surprisingly Entertaining Raunchy Comedy

VERY VERY MILD SPOILERS ARE INSIDE THIS REVIEW.

We've been having a pretty good run of comedies in 2018 so far. Not everything has been golden of course (remember Game Over, Man! or Super Troopers 2?) but in just the span of nearly five months, there has been a solid list of well-made comedic films emerging that remind us all of the age-old versatility that this genre has. Comedies can be mystery thrillers (Game Night), heartfelt coming-of-age tales (Blockers), thoughtful family movies (Paddington 2) and thought-provoking political satire (The Death of Stalin), they don't just have to be run-of-the-mill vehicles churned out on the cheap and quick so that David Spade can buy a new condo this coming summer. Surprisingly, Deadpool 2 comes up as the newest 2018 comedy to deliver both further evidence of how expansive the genre of comedies can be and a large supply of laughs.

John Mulaney Is In Rare Inventive Form In His Hilarious New Comedy Special John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous At Radio Hall

For his fourth stand-up comedy special, John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous At Radio Hall, comedian/tall child John Mulaney decides to take the old adage "If it ain't broke it., don't fix it" to heart for various aspects of the show. His cadence, which is best described as the voice of a crisp radio announcer from the 1920's, that was abundant in past specials is very much kept intact, which is a delight to listen to simply because of how well Mulaney uses that natural voice of his to his advantage to help punctuate numerous jokes. His observational style of humor from prior stand-up specials is similarly prominent here as is his tendency to delve into extensive and hilarious stories about his childhood experiences.

There's Real Potential In Bad Samaritan That Fails To Get Realized

Despite being a dopey B-movie thriller from the director of Geostorm, there's actually an interesting sociopolitical idea at the center of Bad Samaritan that deserves a more thoughtful movie to inhabit. When one boils down Bad Samaritan to its most basic elements, what we have here is a cat and mouse game whose protagonist is an Irish immigrant while our villain is a white male American who acts arrogantly to everyone who comes near to me and who has his status as a foe reinforced by how he threatens to report immigrant workers to immigration services. This is an intriguing hero/villain dynamic built on real-world elements that, unfortunately, becomes a background detail (and one undercut in effectiveness by certain elements in the film we'll talk about later) for a far more generic thriller.

Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis And Some Skillful Diablo Cody Writing Are The Champions of Tully

Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody reunite once again, following their collaborations on Juno and Young Adult, for Tully, a new meditation on motherhood that also brings back the star of the duo's aforementioned project Young Adult, Charlize Theron. Theron gets the chance to play a wildly different character in Tully than the one she portrayed in Young Adult, with her character in Tully being Marlo, a woman who has two children and one more on the way and is feeling...unfulfilled. Life's not awful, she and her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston) get along fine, money's not even too much an issue, but there does seem to be an endless succession of mundane problems every day that she feels like she can never properly address.

What A Twist!: Avengers: Infinity War Spoiler Discussion

OMG THERE'S SO MANY SPOILERS AHEAD

DO NOT GO FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT MASSIVE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR SPOILERS

HERE WE GO