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Writer-Director Lulu Wang Talks The 8 Truths of ‘THE FAREWELL’, a Family Movie About One Big Lie

*The following interview contains spoilers for the movie ‘The Farewell’, as it is based on the real life story of Lulu Wang and, in a suiting intersection between art and artist, to speak about one is to speak about the other. 

The single thought I had exiting A24’s The Farewell, a semi-autobiographical drama about writer-director Lulu Wang’s family’s choice to keep the family matriarch in the dark about her terminal cancer diagnosis, was “What does Nai Nai think of all this?” Wang’s film, a certifiable critical darling and indie box office stunner, reveals in the closing moments that, despite doctoral pessimism, her grandma is still alive and kicking today. The real shocker though came when Wang admitted that even though her Nai Nai is still with us, she still is completely in the dark when it comes to her health. Despite that fact that she visited the very film set where her granddaughter was making a movie about the whole, deeply personal experience.  Read More

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‘STUBER’ Hails Nanjiani and Bautista for Violently Funny Masculinity Workshop

In Stuber, a rogue detective (Dave Bautista) hot on the case of the heroine dealer who killed his partner has just undergone Lasik eye surgery. Functionally blind, Bautista’s Vic not-so-serendipitously gets an urgent break in the case but can barely walk two paces without running into a wall or down a flight of stairs. Wanting to avenge his fallen partner before the case is handed off to the feds, Vic finds salvation in ride share technology, hailing Uber driver Stu (Kumail Nanjiani) to unwittingly save the day as a kind of seeing-eye-Prius-driver. Read More

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‘THE LION KING’ Doesn’t Have An Original Bone in its Stunningly Photorealistic Body

Not a lot of films have found success at the multiplexes this summer with franchise entries like Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dark Phoenix and Men in Black: International crashing and burning at the global box office. What with their iron grip over Marvel (Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far From Home), Pixar (Toy Story 4) and a catalogue of classic animated films like Aladdin and Dumbo ripe for live action remakes at their disposal, Disney has kept their head above flood waters, saving the AMCs and Regals of the world from becoming desolate, sticky wastelands of stale popcorn kernels and cola syrup. Disney is a king of their domain. And that domain is business. And business is good. Read More

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Thematic ‘Toy Story 4’ Puts Big Radical Ideas Over Big Radical Plot 

At the height of Pixar’s creative boon, Toy Story 3 threatened the impossible: a sequel would be the animation studio’s best movie to date. This on the heels of the triple-threat punch of Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up, to this day the finest consecutive output Pixar would manage. Toy Story, to this point in the studio’s history, was Pixar’s only ongoing franchise – Cars 2 would come along and bust their Fresh streak just one year later – but its sequels managed to keep pace with their starkly original one-off creations by diving deeper into the pathos of its collection of anthropomorphic toys and achieving an even greater sense of world-building. Woody, Buzz and the gang discovered things about themselves by exploring larger sandboxes and, accompanying them, we too saw the world with eyes renewed.  Read More

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Punishingly Bland ‘MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL’ Left Me Wanting Neuralization

I know I’ll never get the two hours I just spent watching Men in Black: International back, ’tis part of the great contract us movie critics sign with the devil of Hollywood. But if only there was a way to zap myself with some kind of bright glwoy contraption, to erase that grueling 120-minutes sat in a popcorn-fueled daze,  watching the swashbuckling Chris Hemsworth and charming Tessa Thompson flail in a dead fish revival that was never meant to be. If only some people in black suits could trot up and zap away those banal 7200 seconds, rewriting my history by telling me I just watched John Wick 3 again or just “something really cute” really. But alas, neutralizers don’t exist. And watch Men in Black: International I have. Read More

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SIFF ’19: ‘YESTERDAY’ Part Sunny Beatles Musical, Part Terrible Rom-Com

With Yesterday, a rom-com Trojan-horsed in a concept comedy that imagines a world where Paul, John, George and Ringo never formed The Beatles, Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) has allowed the musical catalog of that formative group to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting. If you’re up for a poppy movie about Beatles music that co-stars Ed Sheeran, this is the movie for you. Otherwise – yeah, probably best to not pay it much mind. Using just enough of Boyle’s trademark flair behind the camera to simulate a modicum of visual intrigue, Yesterday deeply fails its quasi-sci-fi conceit by treating the intriguing parallel universe concept as mere window dressings for a lukewarm romance between struggling artist Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) who strikes it big exploiting his knowledge of Beatles music, and his DIY manager Ellie (Lily James). The movie earns good graces when its blazing through the band’s discography and seeing the world at large react to their music for the first time but the rom-com-heavy second half drags it all off the rails with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually) succumbing to one tired, obnoxious cliché after another in increasingly painful manner. (C) Read More

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SIFF ’19: ‘THE DEATH OF DICK LONG’ A Dicked Up Black Comedy for the Sickos in the Crowd Like Me

In The Death of Dick Long, three close friends and bandmates are horsing around and, wouldn’t you know it, Dick Long dies. Causes are…mysterious.  Playing out like a demented Nickelback-version of Fargo, so begins the most incompetent criminal coverup of all time. Every effort Zeke (Michael Abbot Jr.) and Earl (Andre Hyland) take to conceal their part in the matter only serves to shape a police case against them. The film from Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) is of the jet-black-comedy variety, loaded with schadenfreude and cringe humor that only gets weirdest as it circles a truly wild conclusion. What’s most shocking is that as it turns increasingly deranged, it finds an unexpected sensitive side, turning these Alabama fuck-ups into more than one-dimensional laughing stocks. Do note, this is a textbook A24-style acquired-taste-only films exclusively for those truly looking to get weird. (B+) Read More

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Essential ‘THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO’ Glows With a Special Kind of Movie Magic 

Every once in a while a new voice emerges that feels so innovative, so essential, so fully-fleshed out and whole, that you just want to sing its praises from the rooftop. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails’ stunning story of a friendship, a city, a home, has reduced me to a lame rom-com fuck boy. I want to scream it from the rooftops – I love this movie. Read More

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SIFF ’19: Zom-Com ’THE DEAD DON’T DIE’ Is Stiff Attempt at Satire

As if struck with rigor mortis, Jim Jarmusch’s take on zombies is a DOA satire of sorts, one that’s much too self-aware for its own good. Foregoing the traditional scares of an undead creeper, Jarmusch swings and misses trying to put the “dead” in deadpan comedy. Even his pairing of stars Adam Driver and Bill Murray remains something that sounds better on paper than actually works in this context, their synchronized low-energy, unfazed drift through the world of the undead unable to get much of a rise. Read More

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Mo’ Monsters, Mo’ Problems in Moronic ‘GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS’

One of the chief complaints regarding the 2014 Gareth Evans-directed Godzilla reboot was the lack of screen time for the titular monster. The character for which the film was named famously only appeared on screen for about 8 minutes and some fans felt they got the short end of the stick when they plopped in their theater seats expecting all-out-monster mayhem. In the timeless tradition of cinematic call and response, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, as directed by Michael Dougherty of Trick ‘r Treat and Krampus fame, takes that complaint baton and sprints blindly the other direction, delivering a movie that is packed to the gills with fussy monsters and cityscape destruction porn but remains an exhausting and brain-numbing eyesore nonetheless.  Read More