I see a lot of movies, and have an opinion on most of 'em.
With the big July releases finally starting to lose a little steam, it's starting to look like a proper August at the movies, with summer-y looking things that the studios didn't feel confident opening on big weekends, things that could bridge the summer fun/fall prestige seasons, and three separate anniversary re-releases. The End of Oak Street looks like it could be big, with its high concept
I've got to admit, I thought I'd be well past the point in posting my reviews from Fantasia where I talked about how I saw something else because this was already listed as a coming attraction at the Coolidge so I knew I'd be able to see it and could thus prioritize something that might not come around Boston - the "no time during the festival/tough getting back into writing about it" funk has
Having arrived back home with no particular difficulty, I am actually kind of relieved that studios are still giving The Odyssey and Spider-Man a bit of space, so I can watch some suddenly-good baseball and write movie reviews. I opted to skip The Samurai and the Prisoner at Fantasia once I saw that it was booked at The Coolidge Corner Theatre; so I'll get a chance to catch the new one from
Back to the "de Sève in the afternoon, Hall in the evening" grind (for one of the more pleasant definitions of "grind")! We start off with composer Freya Berkhout, actress Jess McLeod, and writer/director/producer Alice Maio Mackey for Our Effed Up World (with host Justine Smith), which feels like an interesting turn for Mackey in that the trans and nonbinary characters are supporting roles
Back home this week, Brattle back open, and the blockbuster one-two meaning Fantasia hasn't go tme too enormously far behind! The big opening is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with Destin Daniel Cretton taking the reins for the Tom Holland series which sees all Peter Parker's friends no longer aware of his dual identity and changes in his powers, leading to the question of whether, with one of the
Another day, another short film package at the Museum seemingly scheduled with the intent of overlapping everything else in the schedule. But first, Niko. Director Julien Birban Levy is French, apparently spent a fair amount of his youth in New York, lives and works in Tokyo, and decided that this particular film needed to be set in Seoul. I can't necessarily say that it captures that place
Still out of town, but nobody's messing with The Odyssey. Fantasia opening night film Her Private Hell opens at Kendall Square. Nicolas Winding Refn's first film in years, it stars Sophie Thatcher as an actress expected to reconcile with her best-friend-turned-stepmom while making a movie, after she and another costar witness a murder, in a heightened future. Looks amazing, script's a mess.
Pardon if today seems a little more scattered than usual; I left the apartment without my little five-inch square notebook and so wasn't making notes through most of the day, and that's not great when the first couple films of the day are Japanese shorts and new releases; Japanese studios just do not update English-friendly movie databases and there's a lag on the crowd-sourcing as well. I
I started the day by misreading the time for Trauma or, Monsters All as 1:45pm rather than 1:15pm, which means when I got there at 1:30pm, the film was just starting because it had a nice long intro. I occasionally complain about that sort of thing causing films to bump into each other, but in this case it worked out for me, so I'll try not to whine later! It did mean there wasn't a whole lot
I'm out of town so this is obviously my second priority, but the studios have fortunately made it pretty easy on me! The big opening is The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's star-studded version of the classic adventure, featuring Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, plus seemingly half of Hollywood. Shot entirely on Imax film, it's getting most if not all of the premium screens in
Great to be back in Montreal, and not just because it is expected to be stupidly hot in Boston with unexpected apocalyptic air quality because of wildfires in Manitoba. We're looking at a nice 18 days of moves here! Getting here was a bit of a thing, though - I had a 10:40am flight that was supposed to get me here by noon, and was out the door at around 7am or so, but two Red Line
Always the way of it - really scraping to find something to go to some days, then more than you can watch are on the schedule, but also, a thing theaters have been showing previews for is not coming out unless you want to spend twice as much time traveling to see it as watching it. Just a couple years after the original animated film (itself only ten years old) had a pretty successful sequel,
Man, 3.1/10 on IDMB for this? That's, like, *¼ on the four-star scale, And while I know I'm perhaps overly reluctant to get below two stars unless there's either something so shoddy that it looks amateurish about a movie or it's entirely wrong-headed (on top of just skipping that which looks unappealing), that seems pretty harsh for a movie that's loud and dumb but not actually inept. It's kind
So, is there anything coming out next weekend where the politics might be dodgy, especially considering where it comes from? Because that's kind of been Sundays for the past few weeks, and it's starting to get weird. I'm actually surprised, looking at the Chinese box office, that this looks like it's kind of a moderate success in its native country; just looking at the description, it looks
Happy Fourth, if you're feeling it this year. If not, well, try not to overheat heading to the subway to get some air conditioning in the theaters! Minions & Monsters opened Wednesday and continues to play at Fresh Pond (including 3D), the Capitol, the Lexington Venue, Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D Friday-Sunday), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D
It's kind of interesting to see 7 Dogs hit American theaters a week after Unidentified; they've got very little in common aside from having "Saudi Arabia" as the first country listed under "Country of Origin" on IMDB, and sort of represent the two poles of a film industry, especially one that is very new: Unidentified is almost all homegrown talent, topical, and has a genuine sense of place (
There's a big-studio franchise movie clocking in at under two hours this weekend. Is that allowed? Seriously, Supergirl runs 108 pretty-decent minutes, adapting Woman of Tomorrow in less-idiosyncratic but still entertaining fashion, with Milly Aycox strong as the Girl of Steel. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Museum of Science (Omnimax Friday/Saturday), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D
I feel like I say some variation on this every time I see something released by Sony Pictures Classics these days, but it's odd that I'm heading out to Arlington to see this one, rather than it playing in Kendall Square or at the Coolidge. SPC used to be the Kendall's bread and butter, putting out a bunch of foreign and indie material that maybe wasn't as high-profile as what Focus, Searchlight,
I occasionally joke about how it's weird that the folks who saw the first Toy Story and Shrek movies in theaters could conceivably be bringing their grandchildren to the the new ones, but also consider the number of characters whose distinct voices have been recast due to infirmity and death. I dunno, seems like like there's some sort of lesson here. But, nonetheless, we get Toy Story 5 this
Last week, barely anything to see. This week, stuff's blocking each other! The clear big deal is Disclosure Day, a new science fiction adventure from Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp, starring Josh O'Connor as a man who has discovered humanity is not alone and intends to get the word out to the entire world at once; it also features Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, and Eve
Not sure whether this attempt to get back to doing TWIT as warm-up for Fantasia is working or not - my big problem is getting started, which probably won't be as much of a problem in Montreal, but which also means a lazy morning could totally derail me. The Somerville's new tickets (and presumably the Capitol's) are kind of weird - like, are they meant to be ripped in half, although that
Hey, could the next huge hit from some 20-something YouTuber be a romantic comedy or a heist movie or something featuring a great young martial artist? I like horror well enough, but let's switch it up! I guess it's time to see if anyone really wants a Masters of the Universe movie; the one we're getting has Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man, Jared Leto as Skeletor, some half-decent folks picking up
Gonna try and do these at least until Fantasia, trying to get the knack of getting these expansions of my Letterboxd entries done in a few hours, because I always get halfway through and sputter out. So (hits timer at 7PM), let's go! The week starts off as a lot of weeks will this summer, at the Somerville Theatre for their Kurt & Jodie double feature, this week featuring Kurt Russell in
Amused that screen #15 in the 13-screen AMC on Causeway Street (Arclight never finished building out all their intended screens before going bankrupt) is now an "XL" screen, apparently without them doing anything to upgrade it, much like #18 at Boston Common. I don't know that there are any obvious ones to label XL at Assembly Row or South Bay, but it's the easiest "upgrade" of the summer,
Happy Memorial Day, folks - there's two movies with nifty stop-motion!! Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first theatrical entry in the franchise in seven years, with Pedro Pascal reprising his role from the TV series as a bounty hunter now hunting Imperial war criminals for the New Republic, whose latest assignment gets him involved with Hutts, underground fighting, and more. It's at