To strip, perchance to dream; such were the humble hopes of Channing Tatum’s “Magic” Mike Lane when this all began. And what the first film delivered back in 2012 was a kind of movie magic: a scrappy, scampish novelty about Florida men who take their pants off for a living, delivered with loose-limbed auteur style … Read more
It is probably not great news for your project if you spend half the press tour defending your lack of red-carpet chemistry with your co-star. The carpet may be kinder, though, or at least mercifully briefer, than actually sitting through Your Place or Mine, an experience that often feels like watching two movie stars try … Read more
This review initially ran out of the Sundance Film Festival in February 2021. CODA will be released Aug. 13 in theaters and on Apple TV+. The Sundance Film Festival is still often a place for small unpolished gems. But CODA, which premiered there on Thursday night, is the kind of movie that seems to arrive … Read more
Movies and video games have changed a lot since the last time Mario and Luigi were on the big screen. When Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo played the titular roles in 1993’s Super Mario Bros., the concept of adaptation was very loose: The idea wasn’t to replicate the experience of playing a Mario video game … Read more
Ghosted, available now on AppleTV+, is an apt name for a film given that it will haunt me forever for the ways in which it wastes its central talent. Directed by Dexter Fletcher (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman), Ghosted is a fish-out-of-water action comedy in the vein of Spy (divine) and The Spy Who Dumped Me (dismal). … Read more
When it comes to thingamabobs, Disney’s got plenty, but as far as saving graces go, one tale rises to the surface. In 1989, when The Little Mermaid made its initial box office bow, it reinvigorated Disney animation and launched what has been dubbed the Disney Renaissance. It marked the studio’s first animated feature-length hit since … Read more
Modern superhero films have kind of mastered a formula: a comfort food of acts and arcs defining who and what makes a hero. Franchises were built across the past couple of decades with select champions saving the world onscreen… again and again. Yet in the 15 years since a once-scrappy Marvel Studios turned comic book … Read more
When Warner Bros. announced plans to launch a Barbie movie, the entire premise sounded a bit like a game of Hollywood Mad Libs gone wrong: Quick, name a beloved indie director (Greta Gerwig!), an unadapted piece of intellectual property (Barbie dolls!), and an adjective (neon pink!). Every new piece of information that trickled out on … Read more
Anatomy of a Fall has already earned plenty of praise this film season, snagging the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, back in May. Now, it’s making its way stateside to ensnare audiences in its taut and twisty web. When Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) is found dead beneath his French chalet, … Read more
There’s an entire subset of bookish young women who’ve gone through a Flannery O’Connor phase (it usually comes somewhere right before or after the Sylvia Plath obsession). With Wildcat, Maya Hawke gets to channel that literary phase into a big-screen story that is half Flannery O’Connor biopic, half adaptation of O’Connor’s short stories. Directed by … Read more