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Arrival 2016
Arrival deserves our attention for being one of the best-paced, expertly shot and awe-inspiring sci-fi dramas to arrive in theaters in quite some time.
Arrival is Independence Day, with a brain.
Yes, I realize that's a reductive assessment, but it's tough to overlook how both movies approach the shared concept of "first contact by an alien race" from totally different roads. Where tentpole filmmaker Roland Emmerich once placed noisy partygoers on the top of a Los Angeles skyscraper holding homemade…
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La La Land 2016
La La Land is a vital and necessary reminder, to all of us sitting in the theater staring up at that glowing screen, to never stop chasing our dreams.
The smiles start almost immediately, with a CinemaScope gag in the opening credits that lets us know we are in for something historic, nostalgic and fun. The smile grows wider during the opening sequence, a jaw-dropping musical number set in and around a Los Angeles traffic jam that will be studied…
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018
What has been made here is a tremendous achievement built on the genius vision and foundation created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in 1962, and is a stunning tribute to everything the character represents.
There are some pop culture phenomena where intense popularity is an inscrutable mystery, but Spider-Man is not one of those cases. It's not only the fact that the web-slinger was introduced as a teenage protagonist (much closer to the age of young readers than…
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The Martian 2015
One of the year’s most enjoyable and exhilarating films.
The Martian is a mess of movie-making contradictions, in the best ways possible. It’s an effects-heavy sci-fi blockbuster, yet one that emphasizes the “science” over the fiction and actually celebrates intelligence in the game of problem solving. It tells of a deadly-serious rescue mission, one that routinely encounters insurmountable odds, but it makes us laugh uncontrollably as we watch it play out. And though it’s set on a planet that’s 140…
