Before you can fix something, you must first take it apart. Before you can be reborn, you must first be destroyed. That line of thinking motivates director Jean-Marc Vallée’s film, Demolition, a movie that focuses on the self-destruction required to survive … Continue reading DEMOLITION
Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell) is a typical liberal elite, the kind they grow in labs somewhere along the coast. He dresses well enough to look like he has taste, works at a job that makes him enough money to look … Continue reading IRRESISTIBLE
Jo March is elated. A few moments earlier, she was in excruciating pain: Another pie-eyed scribbler stranded on the non-editorial side of the desk. Too shy to admit the truth, Jo (Saoirse Ronan) claims the story is a creation of … Continue reading LITTLE WOMEN
As the saying goes, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Why death hung so darkly over my mind as I penned last year’s Best Of column, I cannot say. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the movies. Maybe it was the Rolling … Continue reading 2019: Something To Do With Death
One good turn deserves another, and from yesterday’s Coco to today’s Cars 3, there’s much to find in every Pixar movie. A revisit proves that the underlying story and emotion holds up—enough. McQueen’s decline and Cruz’s rise are unbalanced, and many middle scenes … Continue reading CARS 3
Mr. Rodgers doesn’t feel like he should be part of this world. His gentleness, kindness, and saint-like patience seem better placed in the world of make-believe — right next to King Friday XIII and Daniel Tiger. Until the recent (and … Continue reading A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Adapted from the 2012 novel by Dennis Lehane, Live By Night is a great American epic stuck inside a misguided movie. Written for the screen, produced, and directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars, Live by Night starts overseas in the trenches of World … Continue reading LIVE BY NIGHT
Michael J. Cinema 