Coco
Animated empowerment
Movies
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
Political procedural
The Greatest Showman
How about an adequate one?
The Big Sick
Serious cross-cultural hilarity
Whisky Galore
Twee and tweedy set
A Perfect Day
Wit and wisdom in a war zone
The Dark Tower
Failed fantasy
Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig has been my favorite actor since Frances Ha. Now she’s my favorite director. The coming-of-age dramedy is about as worked-out a genre as they come. So when a film this honest comes along and makes it all fresh and surprising, it’s worth a look. The actor/writer/director’s keenly observed, semi-autobiographical story of growing up […]
The Commuter
A freshly fired, cash-strapped, ex-NYC-cop insurance salesman is anonymously offered, during his homeward commute, a ton of money to locate on the train a possible witness to a murder. It’s an offer he can’t refuse. He then realizes, considerably later than even the dullest audience member, that he has been set up. And he’s going […]
Unlocked
An expert but spiritually wounded CIA interrogator, or “unlocker” (Noomi Rapace), realizes she’s being set up, and has to run for her life, negotiating a veritable forest of lame plot twists and espionage-flick tropes (digital readouts counting down, etc.) to prevent a biological attack on London. The supporting cast includes a man-bunned Orlando Bloom and […]
Eye on Juliet
Robot spiders to the rescue
The Boss Baby
Baby formula