It was a sleepy year at the cinema in 2017. And since I made the decision to attempt a full year of sobriety it was a sleepy year at home as well. No film screenings – or a record low film screenings for me this last year. I think I went to eight studio screenings […]
“When God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.” – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian At face value Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is a pivotal […]
BABY DRIVER (2017) Directed by: Edgar Wright The Plot: At 22 years old an exceptionally gifted getaway driver (Elgort) for a crime syndicate has reached the point in his career where he’d like to retire. He’s found a promising love interest in a pretty young waitress, (James) and has stowed away enough cash running criminals […]
ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) Directed by: Ridley Scott The Plot: Set ten years after the events in 2012’s Prometheus, Alien: Covenant tells the relatively bleak story of the titular deep space vessel, Covenant, and its mission to deliver thousands of couples, and tens of thousands of human embryos, to a habitable planet colony seven years from […]
GET OUT (2017) Directed by: Jordan Peele The Plot: A gorgeous white girl (Allison Williams) takes her handsome new boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) to meet her parents (Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford) at their posh country estate. There are issues of course. He’s African American and they aren’t. Also, in this part of the country all of […]
JOHN WICK CHAPTER 2 (2017) Directed by: Chad Stahelski The Plot: We pick up pretty much immediately where we last left John Wick in, uh, John Wick. After decimating a major chunk of the Russian Mafia in New York, Wick (Keanu Reeves) returns to home to continue his retirement – mourning his wife, his dog, […]
SPLIT (2017) Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan The Plot: Meet Kevin Wendell Crumb. (James McAvoy) M. Night Shyamalan’s new Many-Me. With twenty-three (cresting into twenty-four) different alter egos Kevin is more habitat than human being. When one of Kevin’s alter personalities kidnaps three underage high school girls (Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richarson, Anya Taylor-Joy) the […]
Editors note: The following review for The Revenant is being republished here because it was chosen by 20th Century Fox for use in their advertising campaign for the home release of the Academy Award winning film last year, and was lost when Examiner.com closed its doors and deleted its entire content bank from the internet. […]
SILENCE (2016) Directed by: Martin Scorsese The Plot: It’s 1640 and Christianity has stagnated upon the rock of Japan. Two Jesuit priests (Garfield, Driver) are sent to investigate the apparent public apostasy of one of their order. (Neeson) Once they arrive in that hard country they stumble into a test of faith much more galling […]
And I’m officially supposed to be retired… In 2016 I was ousted from the comfortable shelter of the highbrow Seattle film media. Like a great, esoteric tortoise I had been ripped from my hallowed shell of cinema cronies – the radiant cinephile dialect only intelligible between snappers – while everything I had written over the […]