We review Ben Affleck’s excellent Nike drama Air, starring Matt Damon. PLOT: In 1984, Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) tries to recruit Michael Jordan as a Hail Mary to save the fledgling basketball shoes division. REVIEW: Ben Affleck’s Air allows the director to play to all his strengths as a director and actor. Like … Read more
Lizzy’s father (Judd Hirsch) was also a sculptor and he takes an interest in his daughter’s work. However, he’s wrapped up in his own life, with two perpetual visitors, played by Amanda Plummer and Matt Molloy, grifter hippies who never settled down. This duo might have been the lively center of another Reichardt film. Lizzy … Read more
Rounding out the group are two self-styled Bonnie and Clydes, Rowan (Kristine Froseth of TV’s “The Society”) and Logan (Lukas Gage of “The White Lotus”). These wisecracking characters are so into each other they often seem insensitive to the pain of others and prone to distraction. (They get so amped up during the long wait … Read more
Most of the film’s emphasis, however, is on the family that Jois abandoned, especially Sam, whose sweet smile and open face start to seem more haunted as the tale goes on. Much of the first half is about Reed and Sam embarking on a two-person odyssey to find Jois, playing private detective by diving into … Read more
There’s a big hole in McAdams’ directorial debut where our compassion for Carl should be. Carl is stuck at the beginning of “Paint” and finds himself repeatedly painting the same landmark of Mt. Mansfield (one of many ongoing jokes that would be funnier with better pacing). Such creative stasis makes way for a weak subplot … Read more
“Beef” is the story of two people who feel like they have had to “take the high road” too many times in their lives. They’re done with it. Danny finds Amy first and does something awful in her house. Amy realizes what’s happening and escalates the action by Yelp-bombing his business and then basically catfishing … Read more
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opens in Brooklyn with the plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) trying to get their new business off the ground. Some Nintendo easter eggs in the background of these initial scenes should produce a small smile from people of my generation, and there’s a bit of … Read more
With “Air,” it all comes together in an enormously entertaining package—one that’s old-fashioned but also alive and crowd-pleasing. Working from a sharp and snappy script by Alex Convery, Affleck tells the story of how Nike nabbed Jordan by creating a shoe that wasn’t just for him but of him—the representation of his soon-to-be iconic persona … Read more
Robert Bresson does nothing in a superficial way to please his audiences. The rewards of his films unfold slowly from their stories, and pierce deeply. He is very serious about human nature and the indifference of the world. He is not a Catholic but an agnostic who values any consolation his characters can find, in … Read more
It would be very instructive to watch a double feature of the new Super Mario Bros. movie and the live-action Super Mario Bros. from 1993. Together they offer a clear snapshot of Hollywood’s evolving relationship to intellectual property. Thirty years ago, movie studios thought they knew best about what worked onscreen, and so they mostly … Read more