#film-criticism

#film-criticism

Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was among 13 students killed at the Columbine shooting, feels that leveraging such subject matter for a romantic comedy is awful.

War of the Worlds won five Razzies in total: worst remake, worst actor, worst screenplay, worst director, and worst picture. Critics panned the movie; it scored abysmally low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Members of the Golden Raspberry Foundation described the direct-to-video War of Worlds remake as a 'cult hate-watch classic' and 'a near sweeper of our $4.97 trophy.'

From its opening scene-a shakedown of Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) by local authorities at a rural gas station-Kleber Mendonça Filho immerses viewers in a world of casual corruption and clandestine violence endemic to authoritarian rule.

During a junket interview with OutNow, Gyllenhaal explained that the punctuation mark was included to represent the "whole lot of energy" that comes out when the historically muted Bride of Frankenstein is finally allowed to speak. That's all well and good, but to viewers the titular exclamation point is less of a metaphor and more of a golden arrow saying, "This movie is going to be crazy."

James Lorimer, writing in the North British Review, promised that the novel would 'never be generally read.' Nearly two centuries later, it's regarded as one of the great works of English literature.

In the Netflix series, three longtime Belfast friends must revisit their childhood trauma to unravel the mystery of a fourth friend's disappearance- raucous Northern Irish hijinks ensue.

When a woman directs boldly, it's trashy. When a man does, it's visionary

Remember when "Wuthering Heights" first screened and all those glowing early reactions flooded social media-with even one "critic" calling it a "God-tier classic"? It turns out that was a carefully calibrated mirage concocted by Warner Bros. A report claims that "Wuthering Heights" had "one of the biggest global marketing juggernauts the world has ever seen." Hyperbole? Maybe. But what do you make of the claim that "almost 2,000 social media influencers were paid by Warners to post nice things about the film"?

"The thing I don't understand is how you lose money running a laundromat," Hamrah writes, "especially if you own the building."

Shuffling under the mortal coil this week (aka hosting the Gabfest), it's our OG players Steve, Dana, and Julia. Like a morose Danish prince contemplating a human skull, they gaze upon the Oscar nominated , based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell inspired by William Shakespeare's life. Directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, Hamnet has brought some critics to tears and left others cold. Our hosts share where they landed.

There's a mildly amusing on-paper joke at the centre of manic art world comedy The Gallerist: what if someone was accidentally impaled on an exhibit but rather than report it, the corpse became part of the artwork? Sure, poking fun at the absurdity of modern art might seem a little dated and definitely a little too easy but maybe with a packed cast including Oscar winners Natalie Portman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, there could be a fun, fast-paced caper here?

Nick Digilio has been a movie critic for 40 years, for many of those years on WGN radio, now with a popular podcast and hosting screenings in Chicago. And I've been talking to him about movies for 25 of those years. I still remember our first conversation, which included a discussion of "Donnie Darko" and the mid-century Hollywood director Douglas Sirk. He usually interviews me, but in honor of his new book, 40 Years, 40 Films, we switched, and I got to interview him.

Grief-porn, in relation to cinema, would suggest that the film in question is emotionally manipulative, formulaic; grief-art would suggest the film unleashes feelings both universal and true. It's curiously circular. In a film about grief, the valorised quality is depth of feeling; it stands or falls by how profoundly the hero(ine) experiences emotion, and the audience proves its acuity, buys itself into the imaginative contract, by its ability to mirror that profundity.

Fraser plays Phillip, a hapless unemployed actor from the US who a few years previously came to Tokyo to do a goofy TV ad for toothpaste and, having no friends or family back home, simply stayed on. He lucks into a weird new source of income: working for a rental family, based on firms in Japan which really do offer bespoke therapeutic role-play services, such as errant spouses, deceased

Russell had already cemented his audacious sensibilities with Tommy and The Devils, but this sci-fi horror, released 45 years ago today, pushes the limits of sensory overload. Renowned screenwriter and novelist Paddy Chayefsky (best known for Network and The Hospital) wrote a powerhouse script based on his surreal 1978 novel, itself inspired by neuroscientist John Cunningham Lilly's research on sensory deprivation tanks and psychedelics.

Something has happened to Netflix's Christmas movies this year. Historically, they've unfolded like lucid dreams one might have when waking up from general anesthesia in an Arizona strip mall. They're like Twin Peaks for people who have been locked out of their Facebook for too many incorrect password attempts. Their plots make little to no sense, they're lit like a Soviet prison, their characters speak to one another like they've been bonked on the head by falling pianos.

A biopic that skips along the surface of its subject, deriving cliched psychological insight from its traumatized source, The Chronology Of Water sees Kristen Stewart liquify Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir into a expressionistic slurry. In her feature debut as writer-director, Stewart takes explicit pains to explicitly render Yuknavitch's pain on screen, drenching the swimmer-turned-writer's life-spanning childhood abuse, young-adult hedonism, and professional success-in over-styled and overindulgent imagery.

Tarantino listed his 20 favorite movies on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, and when discussing his no. 5 pick, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, he had a shocking view of Paul Dano's performance as twins Paul & Eli Sunday. " There Will Be Blood would stand a good chance at being no. 1 or 2 if it didn't have a big, giant flaw in it ... and the flaw is Paul Dano," Tarantino shared as he compared Dano's performance to Daniel Day-Lewis.

Eternity doesn't rank among them, though director David Freyne and his co-writer Pat Cunnane deserve some credit for setting their sights so high. They have built an entire vision of the afterlife to serve as the setting for their otherwise modest romantic comedy. Okay, some credit ... and maybe also some blame. The beyond that they've conjured up is so ridiculously specific that we can't help but start poking holes in it.

Oliver Laxe leads his audience into a wilderness of non-meaning in this strange and unrewardingly oppressive film that was the joint jury prize winner at Cannes this year and the recipient of all sorts of critical superlatives. For me, Sirat is the most overpraised movie of the year exasperating and bizarre in ways that become less and less interesting and more and more ridiculous as the film wears on.