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‘MOONFALL’ A Crash Course on Big Dumb Havoc Wreaking

The master of disaster is back to ruin the world again with Moonfall, a shamelessly bonkers sci-fi disaster movie where the moon is suddenly on a collision course with earth. A select few suspect aliens are involved. Following a string of disappointments, director Roland Emmerich’s latest is a bit of a return to form, or at least whatever form best suits Emmerich. Moonfall is an uncompromisingly ridiculous disaster epic where the scale is as massive as the plot-holes and the human element is consistently overshadowed by destruction special effects. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s dumb, and by the time the whole thing takes shape, it’s almost too much fun to deny its simple pleasures. Almost. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘LEAN ON PETE’ 

Scruffy name aside, Andrew Haigh’s deeply felt and heartstring-plucking Lean on Pete is a sorrowful spirit trip through America’s discarded backcountry where a boy wants desperately for belonging. Haigh’s emotionally draining adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s 2010 novel of the same name is of the traumatic animal movie ilk. Not for the weak-spirited, the film from A24 constantly tests the resolve of its protagonist, putting him in increasingly difficult circumstances. Even the life of the titular Lean on Pete, a racehorse on his last leg, lies under constant threat as his unsympathetic owner makes passing threats of sending him off to the glue factory with all the remorse of stepping on a bug. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD’ 

I’ll never quite understand the arbitrary changes tacked onto movies that are “Based on a True Story”, a trend that is particularly odd in All the Money in the World. This true-to-life horror story about J. Paul Getty and the dastardly kidnapping of his grandson focuses on Getty’s uncooperativeness in hostage negotiations but jumbles the real life numbers in order to gain what I must assume to be added dramatic mileage. It’s an odd lie (hence my paragraph-long nitpick), one that’s not fundamentally different from a teenage boy inflating how many women he’s slept with,  that’s effectively there to emphasize just how much a misery bastard the infamous “Richest Man in the History of the World” truly was. Read More