Prior to its Cannes premiere, Megalopolis had been the most years-long anticipated Francis Ford Coppola project since The Godfather: Part III, which probably should have been a clue right there about how it would turn out. Yet Coppola devotees who still hold him up as a vanguard of cinema – despite how the last film that actually proved it was either in 1979 or sometime in the 80s or early 90s – will still come to Megalopolis ready to hail…
Four years ago, Ford v Ferrari cast Ferrari as the villains in their famed late 1960s battle at Le Mans. In that context, Ferrari is a semi-prequel of sorts, showing how the company and its founder survived various crises in 1957 just to make it to that showdown. But while that earlier movie was the slickest of mainstream crowd pleasers, this one might be more of an endurance test, at least for those not on director Michael Mann’s wavelength.
As…
Nowadays directors with one big indie hit get a far bigger budgeted film as their next project, or receive some kind of blank checked follow-up. Noah Baumbach’s own spouse/writing partner Greta Gerwig got that after Lady Bird with Little Women and then next summer’s Barbie, and now a post Marriage Story Baumbach has it in a far weirder sense with White Noise.
Though Baumbach is actually co-writing Barbie with Gerwig and helped write a few Madagascar movies, the smaller scale…
On Dec 2015, it was finally time for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to face the true test of the Force. It was finally time to judge if the prequels, the fall from grace of George Lucas, the secrecy of J.J. Abrams, and the endless anticipation was all worth it to get to that point.
The enthusiastic reviews after the premiere already assured that it wouldn't be a prequel level disaster. The reviews that came afterwards were a little wearier…
Putting the word “last” in any Star Wars title is almost an oxymoron now, even in an accurate phrase like The Last Jedi. Thanks to Disney, there is no way the Star Wars franchise will ever end, no matter what form it takes in the future. However, while The Force Awakens kicked the process off two years ago, The Last Jedi followed suit with the promise that maybe it won’t be the same old form forever - while it still…
Everyone has a Marriage Story of sorts, whether of their own or of their parents. Inevitably they end with loss, whether from divorce or death. Although divorce is certainly more preferable than death, it is still a “death without a body” as writer/director Noah Baumbach is all too well aware of enough to have a character proclaim.
Baumbach already loosely based his acclaimed 2005 dramedy The Squid and the Whale on his own parents’ divorce, as told through Jeff Daniels,…
In 1983, a Star Wars trilogy ended after two films that have gone down as classics, then and now. However, Return of the Jedi did not quite reach that level, whether or not the Ewoks were to blame. Nonetheless, it could not erase the legacy of its two predecessors no matter what, as the trilogy’s place in history was long since set in stone.
In 2005, a Star Wars trilogy ended after two films that have gone down as disasters,…
The Last Duel is a long, colorless, often slow retelling of a true story, where a woman who’s often barely seen for the first two acts is wronged by Adam Driver, and a past Oscar winner looks ridiculous in comedic relief. But of the two Ridley Scott films this fall to fit this description, this is the one he got right, or at least the one he got much better writers for.
Of course, the three act, three perspective and…
House of Gucci sold itself as a wild, at least semi campy romp in its trailers, or tried to make itself look like it did. But as it turns out, the biggest thing that undercuts those two-and-a-half minutes of madness and meme worthy one-liners is the movie’s other 150 minutes. In reality, Ridley Scott has made less of a rollercoaster ride and more of an endurance test, which probably should have been foreseen the minute he signed onto it.
The…