00s movies
Movie Review: Caught Stealing
3 stars out of 5 I’ve seen Caught Stealing, once, when I was 55. Whoops I mean 56. Hi Darren Aronofsky. Big fan. Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, The Wrestler, Mother!: awesome. The Whale, Noah: pretty good. The Fountain was incomprehensible garbage but, hey, you tried. Caught Stealing is… average. Innocent likable guy gets […]
Movie Review: Jurassic World—Rebirth
4 stars out of 5 Hot take: Jurassic World is more entertaining than Superman. There, I said it. I chalk it up to filmmakers who really know what they’re doing. Director Gareth Edwards earned his sci-fi stripes with 2014’s Godzilla and Rogue One. And writer David Koepp not only did the screenplay for the original […]
Movie Review: 28 Years Later
4.5 stars out of 5 28 Days Later came out 23 years ago and all I remember is that it was scary and very good, and also that a couple of years earlier, Sandra Bullock had starred in a movie called 28 Days so that was kind of funny. When I recently learned that director […]
Movie Review: Mission Impossible—Final Reckoning
3.5 stars out of 5Well, it’s the final Mission: Impossible, I reckon — until they decide to reboot the series in two years with an extended cameo from Tom Cruise as Jim Phelps. Or it’s a prequel reboot streaming show focusing on Phelps’ early days, to air on Amazon Prime. Principal photography will likely begin […]
Movie Review: Gladiator II
4 stars out of 5 All I remembered about the first Gladiator, from 2000, is that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and also that it was one of the movies which made me realize that even though Russell Crowe seemed like a jerk in real life, he was a […]
Movie Review: Poor Things
3.5 stars out of 5 Dear Poor Things:Where The Wild Things Are called; it wants its font treatment back. OK, on to the review! For the first 30–45 minutes, I was entranced by this film, laughing out loud, prepared to re-order my top movies of the year, and ready to hand the Best Actress Oscar […]
Movie Review: The Holdovers
3.5 stars out of 5 You can go see this movie or, just watch the trailer, as there isn’t too much difference. Meet Paul Giamatti; he’s a curmudgeonly teacher! Now meet a bunch of students left behind over winter break at a fancy school — and Giamatti has to oversee them! Throw in the cafeteria […]
Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
4 stars out of 5 I was 12 when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, and the lost ark of the Covenant was mentioned in the Haftorah portion at my bar mitzvah. Needless to say, I have an awful of lot of emotional energy invested in the character of Indiana Jones. And though hard […]
Movie Review: Asteroid City
4 stars out of 5Wes Anderson is one of my all-time fave filmmakers so if he wants to continue experimenting with the form — puppets, anthology, and now, a story within a story — it’s certainly OK with me. Whether these “exercises” create a bit of distance between film and viewer and thereby prevent the […]
Movie Review: Crimes of the Future
4 stars out of 5Be careful what you wish for, they say. The last time I reviewed a David Cronenberg movie, A Dangerous Method over a decade ago, I said that the talky film made me “long for the twistedness of Dead Ringers, etc.” At age 79, my crony Croney is back with maybe his […]
Jack Silbert, curator