Dirty Grandpa leaves a stain
Movie review: Dirty Grandpa
Robert De Niro and Zac Efron hit the road, and rock bottom, in this grotesquely sexist and vulgar attempt at comedy that uses crack and pedophilia as fodder.
Ten Sundance titles that tweak our critical antenna
Film: The 2016 Sundance Film Festival
This year's festival includes a testament to Kristen Stewart's continuing career in art house cinema, Don Cheadle tooting his own horn as Miles Davis and one movie about a wiener dog, and another about a dog named Weiner.
By Katherine Monk
The festival kicks off in earnest later today with Robert Redford's annual press conference, but before the press corps gets pressed together and becomes a blurb-spouting Borg, I made a list of ten standout titles that may, or may not, get mileage when it's all over: Captain Fantastic: Viggo Mortensen plays a father who’s raised six kids off the grid, and — for reasons as yet unknown — is forced to plug back in the world he left behind. Certain Women: Kelly Reichardt is a true independent who embodies the Sundance ethos, and she returns with Certain Women, an adaptation of Maile Meloy’s short stories that stars Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone. Complete ...
A direct hit to the head of the NFL
Movie review: Concussion
Thanks to a cast that's just as comfortable with comedy as drama, Peter Landesman's forensic examination of the NFL's inaction on head injuries is more than a preachy lesson in institutional denial, it's a gentle testament to the importance of human compassion
Metaphysics on a small scale
Movie review: Anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson create an existential nightmare that lets the viewer play god while the human comedy looks smaller, and more magical, than ever
Top Ten 2015: Women land box-office blows for a surprise win
Movies: Top Ten 2015
Women stormed the box-office with raw power and profound emotional insight, overcoming Hollywood's institutional misogyny
By Katherine Monk
Let’s hear it for the girls. Though the year started slowly with just a handful of bright moments on what seemed to be a rather bleak horizon — from a pruny soak in a Hot Tub Time Machine and a disappointing date with The Avengers — 2015 ended up celebrating the fair sex in surprise fashion, starting with Mad Max’s furious females lead by Charlize Theron. The movie was kicked from the ticket wicket by Elizabeth Banks’s Pitch Perfect chorus, but there was still plenty of room for revision as Melissa McCarthy took on the spy genre and Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith deconstructed the adolescent female psyche in Inside Out. James Bond lost a bit of box-office mojo with Spectre – pulling in $196 million domestically, compared to Skyfall’s $304 million – but while Hollywood expressed concern over a grim ...
Murder, He Wrote
Movie review: The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino creates a self-conscious cartoon that puts a bullet through the brain of western myth
Pointless and broken
Movie review: Point Break
The remake of Kathryn Bigelow's cult classic about two dudes on opposite sides of the law is a murky bore
Mississippi Grind percolates
Movie review: Mississippi Grind
The team behind Half Nelson and Sugar return with a film about chronic gambling that isn't as depressing as it probably should be, thanks to a pair of pocket kings in Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn
Creed knows where it’s coming from
Movie Review: Creed
Fruitvale Station's Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan reunite in Creed, an elegant and surprisingly emotional reboot of the Rocky franchise
