There are several things about October that demand appreciation, the chief of which is that this film has been written, not constructed. The real winner here, by miles, is the writer Juhi Chaturvedi.

Two hotel management trainees, Dan (Dhawan) and Shiuli (Sandhu) forge an unlikely bond in the most trying of circumstances. The film is a gentle unfolding of love and loss and longing, and takes its time getting to where it?s headed. Calling it slow would be to entirely miss the point, because the rhythms of life cannot be fast-forwarded.

In a Bollywood still all at sea when it comes to credible relationship dramas, it?s good to see attention being paid to life?s wholly unexpected stutters and halts, where background music is not used as a crutch, and whose young people interact with each pretty much the way the young do: the film is set in Delhi, a city director Shoojit Sircar is familiar with, and that adds to the feeling of welcome realism.

Equally crucial, the film tells us that romance doesn?t necessarily have to play out in the metric of song-and-dance-and-high-pitched-melodrama; that it can be low-key, and unusual, can be conducted through speaking glances, rather than words.

October reminds you strongly of last year?s The Big Sick whose two lead protagonists find themselves spending large chunks of their time in a hospital, she beset by a serious illness, and he trying to figure out stuff.

October has a young man trying to figure out stuff, too: this is Dhawan?s most life-like character till now (his last outing was Judwaa 2 in which he plays a version of himself, aping Salman Khan via Govinda). Movie Review: October (2018) is a fairly trying fellow, always reluctant to buckle down and do the back-breaking scutwork that comes with his territory, always trying to cut corners.

His realization that he may have meant something more than just an irritating colleague to the limpid eyed Shiuli is a bit sudden, but we let it go, because we get drawn into the world of hospitals and artificial lights and life support systems, where the two are ably supported by solid performers. There are strong moments here, almost making us forget that we never quite know why Dan behaves in such a surly, entitled fashion, but that?s a crucial hole.

As Shiuli?s suffering yet stoic mother, Gitanjali Rao shows us the pain of a woman who doesn?t know what?s right, but also knows the power of love. She shares the film?s most moving scene with Dan?s mother (Rachica Oswal, in a terrific walk-on part) where the two women speak of children, growing up, and responsibility, and how it can mean different things to different people. There?s such a strong connection between these two women who?ve met for the first time, and may never meet again. Ironically, Movie Review: October (2018) between Dan and Shiuli, built up through the film, never has this much feeling.

Also Read | October movie release LIVE UPDATES: Review, audience reaction and more

Sandhu is lovely and tender. It is a wonderful debut. And yet, despite all these astutely done bits and bobs, October doesn?t come as together as have the two earlier ventures of Sircar and Chaturvedi, Vicky Donor and Piku. That?s squarely down to Dhawan, whose stardom is clearly a double-edged sword: it is both an advantage and a weak link. From Badlapur on, it?s clear that Dhawan wants to stretch himself and do all kinds of roles. Which is great, because films like October will go out widely because of Dhawan, but it also leads to a kind of dilution.

We cap off what some Hollywood-watching wags have dubbed ?Asian August? with a gripping thriller called Searching. For all the merited hoopla over Crazy Rich Asians, we Asian-Americans need a film like Searching just as badly, a genre piece where John Cho is not a symbol of our ethnic experience but just a guy in a tough spot. It?s well that this film, among the small but increasing subgenre of movies that take place entirely on computer screens, is the best of those.

Cho plays David Kim, a Silicon Valley drone who?s been raising his 16-year-old daughter Margot (Michelle La) by himself in the two years since his wife?s death. Margot seems a model student until she goes to a study group at a classmate?s house and never returns home, nor does she attend school the next day. As Watch Searching 2018 go by and grind down his concerns that he?s being paranoid, David starts investigating her life and finds out that she has shut out her friends at school in favor of a shady acquaintance on a webcasting platform. Her bank account shows some funny transactions, too, related to the $100 she?s been taking every week for piano lessons, which she turns out to have canceled months ago. Eventually, a remarkably dedicated police detective (Debra Messing) launches a manhunt in the San Jose area.

If this plot is full of wild coincidences upon reflection, nothing in the moment feels terribly implausible (which can?t be said for the Unfriended sequel from earlier this summer), including the queasy bit when a funeral home emails David shortly after Margot? http://tinyurl.com/y9bywzso and offers to livestream her memorial service. Though David is a tech worker, he doesn?t have any special skills or software that we don?t have, just a creativity borne of desperation. He gathers up her passwords and rummages through the photos on her Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr feeds after cluelessly asking, ?What?s a tumbler?? Even Reddit turns up a clue amid the repulsive threads accusing David of killing his daughter and Margot of pulling a Gone Girl, plus an Alex Jones lookalike blaming her fate on those pedophiles overrunning America. First-time director Aneesh Chaganty is the son of Silicon Valley professionals, and he knows how to use these new means of communication to generate tension as David finds that Margot?s online life is wholly different from the one she lived in his house. Chaganty?s also savvy enough to use the storytelling gimmick for mordant humor: We see the screen as David composes a text message of several hundred words ranting at Margot for failing to do her chores, then the cursor stops at the end to change the final exclamation point into a period, as if that?ll keep it from seeming over the top.

"With an arm like yours, you don't want to use that. It's too unpredictable," advises grandpa Jacob (Michael Ironside) when young Henry (Luca Villacis) is showing him his baseball pitches. He advises sticking to something simpler, but Henry, despite the affability of his response, is far from a simple boy. His ability to deal with (and deal out) the unpredictable could save his life.

Henry has been dropped off with Jacob at the last minute because his parents have to travel across country for a funeral. Scares For The Whole Family ? Variety has been estranged from the old man since the death of her own mother, whom she found hanging in the barn, but Jacob agrees to help out nonetheless, and although he immediately puts the boy to work - he has a farm to run - he also shows a friendly side, cooks him dinner and tries to make him feel welcome. But when unexpected circumstances mean that Henry finds himself alone on the farm, an overly friendly neighbour turns out to be a potentially deadly threat, and the boy must use all his ingenuity to survive.

It's essentially a simple premise but the delivery is a thing of beauty. Villacis turns in one of those rare performances that perfectly captures what it means to be 12 without alienating adult viewers. We see his physical and emotional vulnerability, the hopelessness of him trying to match his opponent's strength, yet we also see his quick-wittedness and an ingenuity that too many people lose in adulthood. He is by no means an easy victim. There are very few points at which viewers will want to shout at him to do things differently. This is the sort of film that will make parents want to encourage their children to play more violent video games. And yes, there are points at which viewers might be reminded of Home Alone, but the tone here is very different - because as he works to engineer his survival, Henry gradually uncovers hints of why this is happening that take the film to a very dark place.

Knuckleball screened at this year's Fantasia. In the past, the festival has shown a number of films about women trying to survive in this kind of cat and mouse situation, but switching the focus to a child gives it much more power, partly because the comparative physical helplessness of the protagonist is much more believable and partly because the idea of sexual threat to a child will conjure up immediate horror in most viewers, with no sense of an invitation to relish the suffering involved. Indeed, director Michael Peterson is very careful not to present events in a way that might titillate, even though we can see the desire felt by the boy's assailant. In this role, Munro Chambers is perhaps just a little too obviously creepy, letting us see the monster too early and not showing us enough of the man, but then we have to accept that a 12-year-old would be able to spot the warning signs and act on them with confidence, so the film might have lost believability had it gone too far in the other direction.

Though the music is a bit too heavy-handed, Peterson is very good at building suspense, inviting us to feel fearful of mundane objects in the early scenes long before any threat has made itself manifest. DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical keeps us on the edge of our seats throughout, with unnerving slow sequences in between the action scenes - of which there are many, some of them quite gruesome. The Austin Chronicle are given just enough information to make sense of the larger plot and the horrific meaning of things glimpsed in passing without any lengthy exposition. Crucially, our identification with Henry is never broken by the invitation to understand things that he cannot, and watching the boy forced to come to terms with the cruelty of other human beings is just as disturbing as seeing him forced to fight for his life.

Though gruelling in places, Knuckleball is a thriller in the truest sense. A pared-down ending leaves many questions to be asked, adding to its emotional impact. Peterson understands that one doesn't need a complicated plot to keep on finding unpredictable things in human nature.

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Sean Haggerty (Daniel Radcliffe) is a pilot who used to fly with the U.S. Air Force, but now has been forced to make his income flying light aircraft for Mexican drugs cartels into the United States, which is what he is doing at the moment. It is night time, and the conditions are overcast and windy, but Sean has other things on his mind, such as his wife Jen (Grace Gummer) who he is talking to on his phone, trying to reassure her all will be well and he will be able to return to her so they can start their family they have planned since they fell in love. However, there are Beast of Burden Review (2018) on the flight he has no inkling of... The single location drama or thriller, where one character takes the lead and the lion's share of the dialogue, became an occasionally returned to subgenre with the advent of the mobile phone, where you could have your star on one set and the rest of the cast could call them and the plot would unfold that way. Phone Booth, ironically not using a mobile, was the apparent instigator of the format, then there was the Ryan Reynolds exercise Buried, but Beast of Burden appeared to be taking its cue more from the Tom Hardy driving solo showcase Locke, given Radcliffe was in a small vehicle and discussing matters over the ether with the goodies and baddies. After that manner, this could easily have been a radio play, and indeed should you choose to watch it you might have believed it was, since director Jesper Ganslandt made the confounding decision to film the action in near-impenetrable gloom from start to finish. There were long stretches where it was barely worth your while looking at the screen, so negligent was this to creating something even borderline interesting to look at, never mind discern, and you imagine those Daniel Radcliffe completists, of whom there are a few off the back of Harry Potter, would be doubly frustrated in that they could not get a decent look at their idol when they lined this one up to watch. So awful was the cinematography, or the lighting to be more specific, that quite often you had to take it as read that really was Radcliffe on the screen; it sounded like him, but he could have used an impersonator, or at least provided a voiceover. Not helping was the storyline, a mishmash of clichés relating to Mexican gangsters and the American D.E.A. who try to combat and ultimately stop them, having recruited Haggerty to act as informer as long as he can secure safety for himself and Jen. If this had been played out on the ground, it would not have been compelling to any greater degree, therefore in the aircraft set which was accompanied by the loud drone of the engines, you had one of the least attractive thrillers of its decade. At one point, talking of drones, Haggerty wound down the window of the cockpit and fired a pistol at a flying drone that had pulled up alongside him, or that's what you had to assume was happening since you may have seen the gunmetal flash in the dim glow of the instrument panel, but you assuredly could not see any drone. The director did not quite have the conviction to film exclusively in the cockpit, so every so often we were offered a flashback where we got to witness how the hero wound up in this position, yet even this was not capitalised on as they were more often than not wholly superfluous to whatever was supposed to be going on in the air in current time. It's difficult to see - well, yeah, it's difficult to see, but also it's hard to understand how it was possible to mess up such a simple concept, with a bankable star, but Beast of Burden managed it with an insane dedication to self-sabotage. Absolutely baffling. Music by Tom - no, Tim Jones. [No extras on Thunderbird's DVD, but Radcliffe fans will be curious about it.] This review has been viewed 194 time(s). As a member you could Rate this film

By the third act of Paul Feig?s remarkably campy ?A Simple Favor,? the cliches have piled up at such an alarming rate that it may prove best for audiences to start taking notes, just to keep track. There?s the haunted mansion, the boozed-out matriarch, the creepy religious summer camp, incest, a remarkable closet, a whole mess of drugs, blackmail, something about an abusive father, and those are just the bits that can be mentioned without unraveling the bigger pieces of a convoluted story that never rests.

However, such note-taking would amount to the most thinking the film will require of its audience, a late-season entry into the race of summer?s biggest ?guilty pleasure,? a film that is both very entertaining and exceedingly stupid. No surprise here: The final moments all but scream, ? A SIMPLE FAVOR Review: Only The Slightest Shades Darker !?

And perhaps they should, because for all its bonkers plotting and knee-slapping line delivery, ?A Simple Favor? is compulsively watchable, a downmarket spin on ?Gone Girl? and ?The Girl on the Train? that is enthralling mostly because it?s never clear what the hell is going to happen next. Even fans of Darcey Bell?s pulpy bestseller, adapted by Jessica Sharzer, will likely be left aghast by some late-act plotting that spin the film off into still-nuttier territory.

Feig?s first act is relatively tame compared to what unfolds in the film?s rollercoaster final hour, though early touches hint at some of the madness to come. For starters, the film?s lead actresses are game from the get-go, a characteristic that will serve them well when everything starts going so gleefully off the rails. Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a widowed mommy vlogger who approaches everything, from her daily videos about recipes and crafts to her volunteer duties at her son?s school, with a gusto that borders on mania. The other parents, including a standout Andrew Rannells, mock her, and her social life appears to be nonexistent.

It?s no surprise that when the glamorous Emily (Blake Lively) deigns to show up at elementary school to pick up her own tot, best friends with Stephanie?s kid, her arrival is played for both laughs and gasps. Dressed like a sexy Monopoly man ? amazing tailored suits, kicky accessories, the occasional cane ? Emily sweeps into a suburban parking lot and upends everything, especially Stephanie. Though it?s never clear how long the pair have actually known each other ? among its many faults, ?A Simple Favor? has a baffling handle on the passage of time ? but once she sets her sights on the perky vlogger, Stephanie is toast.

Soon, they?re best pals, a friendship literally eased along by boozy afternoons and Emily?s uncanny ability to get people like Stephanie to spill their guts to her. For Emily, it?s likely based on some kind of convenience, because no one is as reliable as Stephanie, and Emily needs that kind of stability, even if it?s only used to ensure that someone is around to pick her kid up from school. That?s the simple favor of the film?s title, and though Stephanie is happy to watch Emily?s son, things get weird after Emily fails to show for a pickup. Bits of info abound: she?s in Miami for work, her husband Sean (?Crazy Rich Asians? breakout Henry Golding) is in London with an emergency, she?s done this before, she?ll do it again, that?s just Emily for you.

But this time is different, and when Emily doesn?t come back and is ? gasp ? found dead (no, really, we?re still in the first act here and this is somehow not a spoiler), Stephanie?s life takes even more crazy turns. Feig uses Stephanie? ?A Simple Favor? Review ? Variety as a smart way to get to know her and her crumbling mental state, and a screen-filling, no-nonsense design encourages the audience to root around for extra information, from her climbing follower numbers to the comments people fire off.

Stephanie soon becomes convinced that Emily isn?t actually dead, and who can blame her? Not only does Emily?s son swear he?s seen his mommy loitering around, but she?s started calling Stephanie up on the phone at odd hours, all the better to roast her BFF with long-held secrets (and take her to task for her growing relationship with Sean). Feig isn?t interested in plumbing the depths of Stephanie?s psychology, instead offering it up plain-faced: she?s not nuts, but everyone else involved in this story probably is.

What?s actually going on with Emily (and, by extension, Stephanie) is more complex than an entire season of a soap opera, and the twists and turns that unfold over the course of the film run the gamut from compelling to insulting. Kendrick never misses a step, though, and when Lively is introduced back into the fold, her cool-girl persona has an alluring added edge. Keeping up with the plot becomes a matter of pure will, but Stephanie and Emily zing from one shocker to another, so fully invested that it?s impossible not to admire their range, even as you?re laughing at some of the lines they?re forced to toss off and narrative change-ups they are expected to sell.

No one will see the final twists coming, if only because Feig goes for the spaghetti method of storytelling: Throw a whole bunch of stuff at the wall and something has got to stick. Only some does, but the good stuff ? the really campy, trashy, nutty stuff ? is the kind of thing popcorn cinema hasn?t so happily embraced in years. A Simple Favor Review of it?s that complicated, really, but sometimes, simple pleasures are the best.

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The 15:17 to Paris Dir. Clint Eastwood, U.S., Warner Bros.

Like Sully, Clint Eastwood?s The 15:17 to Parisis about a moment of decisiveness in which an average American man became a hero. And like American Sniper, it is about the making of that hero by the part of America that both Fox News viewers and New York Timeseditors think of when they think of ?the real America.? Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler, who in 2015 charged down a gunman preparing to massacre the passengers of the Eurostar train they were on as the last leg of a backpacking trip, and who play themselves onscreen (quite stiffly), are shown as products of American mythmaking. They soak up their grandfathers? war stories, recruitment ads, and other Clint Eastwood movies: Stone at one point wears a Man with No Name t-shirt, and has a Letters from Iwo Jimaposter in his childhood bedroom alongside one for Full Metal Jacket. Clint has been derided in some quarters for these small vanities, but they?re perfectly apt for a movie in which real life and movie life interact in ways that are frequently awkward, frequently touching, and always singular.

In making a feature film out of an event that unfolded in slightly more time than Sully?s United Flight 1549 was airborne, Eastwood now focuses primarily on the lead-up, rather than the aftermath. Drawing from the trio?s ghostwritten quickie memoir, screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal?a production assistant on Sullygetting her feature screenplay credit?places their friendship on a collision course with destiny. At the time, Stone was an active-duty Air Force airman, Skarlatos a National Guardsman who had returned from a deployment in Afghanistan, and Sadler a student at Cal State. The film begins in Sacramento, where Stone and Skarlatos, two academic strugglers raised by single moms, meet Sadler, a mischievous fellow misfit at their Christian academy.

These early scenes are excruciating, marked by placeholder dialogue no children would ever say?expository for young Spencer and Alek and silver-tongued, with lots of conditional clauses, for Anthony. These scenes are enlivened only by stripped-down turns from comic actors doing their shtick without the jokes: Thomas Lennon as a smug, prissy fundamentalist principal, and Toby Hale as a toxically ineffectual gym teacher who is ?in a moodtoday, whoo!? Hale, especially, with the pathos behind his pettiness, would fit right into another recent on-screen Bush-era Sacramento Christian school, Lady Bird?s Immaculate Heart. Here, as in that film (and in America at large), class is somewhat difficult to parse, given that the visible trappings of middle-class life go hand-in-glove with anxiety bordering on the existential. Stone?s mother (Judy Greer) appears to own her detached home, and given the lengths to which the film goes to manufacture ?stakes,? you can bet that if she was underwater on her mortgage we?d hear about it. But Greer effectively puts across the precarious mental state of a single mother of a tearaway kid?no one to take over when you?re tired, so you?re always skating along the very edge of rage to keep from shutting down completely.

Such deftness is atypical of a movie that will entertain the kind of viewer who updates the ?Goofs? section of movies? IMDb pages. (Remember the rubber baby in American Sniper?) Greer and Jenna Fischer, as Mama Skarlatos, fare worse once the child actors are replaced by the real Stone and Skarlatos: Eastwood makes no real attempt to correspondingly age their mothers up by ten years, and the actresses appear more tentative when thrust into scenes opposite their suddenly Large Adult Sons. And the dialogue feels at times almost purposefully cringeworthy: when Stone tells Sadler about the college basketball player who ?dunked on this fool? (the characters often watch, and desultorily narrate, televised sports) or when Greer shuts down a teacher trying to force ADD medication down her kid?s throat, saying, ?My God is bigger than your statistics,? it?s like the movie is daring you to feel superior to it.

The filmmaking, as square as the characters, courts its viewers with obvious avowals of shared values. Stone prays, as a child and again at the film?s denouement, ?Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.? The boys pester cool teacher Jaleel White for old WWII battle plans, dress in camo, and play war games?though the arsenal of Airsoft guns the pubescent Stone lays out on his bed may not signal innocent enthusiasm to every viewer. These two strands, the devout and the martial, eventually come together in a purpose-driven life: after Stone, pudgy and aimless, meets a military recruiter, he identifies his higher calling as serving and saving lives in the Air Force?s totally rad Pararescue unit. This American hero?s origin myth is located not within the already rugged American milieu of rodeo, as in American Sniper, but at a Jamba Juice, where Stone?s Hot Topic goth coworker reminds him that the smoothie he comped his recruiter is coming out of his own tip money. It?s as unpromising a location as the Times Square Irish bar, playing the late local news, where Sully has his epiphany. The filmmaking in Eastwood?s latter-day ripped-from-the-headlines stories feels radically unprocessed, the stuff of modern life transcribed simply and faithfully: the Eurozone train travel scenes here, with their wheel bags and fast-fashion slip-on shoes crisscrossing station platforms, recall Sully?s version of flight, always grounded in Hudson News and the heft of carry-on luggage.

It?s frankly astonishing that Eastwood, disciple of ?Don and Sergio,? would film a scene in which a couple of beefy bros in shorts buy and eat gelato at a tourist-trap stand in Venice. Stone and Sadler, spending this leg of their long-planned European trip with a solo-flying American chick they?ve been trying to flirt with, pick out their flavors (hazelnut!), pay the man, and make growly approving nom-nom sounds. But the ice cream ismore exciting for being eaten in Venice; somewhere amidst the dudes? performative gelato ecstasy is a glimmer of awareness that this is a special time in their lives. You may be reminded at this juncture that military service is one of the few engines of upward social mobility left in this country, or of what a privilege it is to be a member of the minority of Americans who hold valid passports, or to have access, as Sadler does, to the kind of credit that could fund a latter-day Grand Tour.

Like anyone else, these Americans abroad relate to the greatness of Rome and the Renaissance through the means with which their life experience has provided them. They are notably more animated at the Coliseum than the Spanish Steps, having seen Gladiator. Their marveling at all the ?old shit? there is in Europe isn?t ignorance, it?s gratitude?an awareness that they should mark the moment by saying something, however much their dutiful sightseeing is compromised by hangovers from last night?s city-center rave excursion with a bunch of Erasmus students. (Though even there, what constitutes ?epic? is a fully clothed Stone getting up on a stripper pole and sliding down it very slowly.)

The rosy view of ugly Americans abroad?the camera?s eye follows the characters? up the legs of Euro hotties in discos and hostels?precedes a rosy view of Americans intervening in an attempted Islamic-fundamentalist terrorist attack. During this time of extraordinary political bad faith, it?s healthy to remember that traits like bravery and self-sufficiency and the desire to be useful are virtues that can be motivated by any number of belief systems. For all the presumption, exclusion and machismo of Stone?s dreams of Eastwoodian cowboy/solider gallantry there is something very moving in his reaction when he?s told that a poor vision test will keep him out of Pararescue. That he won?t get to be one of the gallant elect who makes a difference, and will have to find his life?s meaning all over again.

Essentially, Stone wants to be a character in a Clint Eastwood movie?and for much of The 15:17 to Paris, this unfulfilled ambition animates the film's form as much as it does its content. Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler's simulation of their own genuine lifelong friendship is notably unconvincing, full of camera-shy gravelly-voiced diffidence and hilariously basic half-speed evocations of everyday interactions. Even the self-aware Sadler, who talks through his selfie-stick framings in faintly visible quotations marks, is so far from being a natural camera presence that the distance between the banality of life and the sublime of cinema seems practically unbridgeable. This sense that transcendence is elusive to us mere mortals is the explicit subject of the film. Stone, looking out over rooftops in Venice, proclaims that he feels as if the world is ?catapulting? him toward some great event, some reckoning?a part in a story that will itself be told and retold. But for nearly its entirety, The 15:17 to Parisinhabits the gap between lived and imagined experience?something more frequently the purview of microindie cinema. I?m thinking of Aaron Katz?s Cold Weather, whose mumblecore characters find themselves caught up in a neo-noir mystery, or Wild Canaries, Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal?s role-play remake of Manhattan Murder Mystery. In fact, Wild Canaries, with its occasional precise slapstick bits and tart dialogue, is a more polished piece of cinema than the new Eastwood movie?until the very classical action set piece climax, when Clint?s filmmaking chops snap back into place like William Munny?s killer instinct, and Stone finds the culmination and validation of his desire to serve God and country, after the frustrating day-to-day of school and basic training.

After planting glimpses of the train attack between act breaks throughout the film, Eastwood mounts an uninterrupted restaging, beginning with the scuffle outside the bathroom, the single pistol shot, and the assault rifle drawn before Stone?who has been crouched in wait behind his seat, watching in intense close-up, his blank, uncinematic face suddenly evocative in its focus?makes his move. The close-quarters scuffle is largely constrained to the aisle of a single train car, which becomes a channel for the will of the participants. Stone tackled the assailant after his rifle jammed; Eastwood gives us the moment in a clean shot-reverse shot, with Stone charging, seatbacks vaguely visible in widescreen telephoto, and then his target, the full length of the rifle running across the center of the frame, the shot already lined up. Eastwood makes it entirely clear that Stone is running toward the moment of his death, and that in this sacrifice he has, finally and decisively, found his life?s purpose. An instinct born and nurtured in a gun-crazy Christian nation is elevated to a state of grace.

And yet. The triumphant story of The 15:17 to Parisimplicitly thumbs its nose at attitudes like that of the ectomorphic German bike-tour guide who, earlier in the film, snidely tells Stone that the Russians, not the Americans, were closing in on Berlin at the close of WWII: here, Team America really is the world?s police. Blyskal and Eastwood cherry-pick incidents to justify not just the feature length but also Stone?s sense of ?catapulting? toward his moment: Stone unarmed and impotent during a false-alarm lockdown at his military base, and then finally finding the Air Force fulfilling as he develops the jiujitsu skills that will serve him so well on the train. Thus it seems as if the characters of The 15:17 to Parisseek out a grand narrative as much as they rise to it.

The15:17 to Parissubscribes to the particularly all-American retail Protestantism in which God has a plan for you, and manifests decisively in the lives of the faithful. The God who answers Spencer Stone?s prayers is not the same God that Milton served even in his blindness. If nothing out of the ordinary had happened on that train, would these dudes? lives have been worth it, or would their service have felt like an anticlimax? The15:17to Parisrewards its characters? ambitions of being God?s ? https://www.thanostv.org/movie/the-15-17-to-paris-2018 ??how wonderful, but also how disturbing, the way that faith is so wrapped up in exceptionalism.

When future academics look back on the crisis of masculinity in late-2010s America, they could do worse than to watch Sean Anders?s Daddy?s Home films, a comedy franchise so steeped in contemporary male insecurity it?s practically begging to be unpacked in a gender studies seminar. Like its predecessor, Daddy?s Home 2 takes great delight in finding ways to emasculate Brad (Will Ferrell), a good-natured suburban stepdad who?s routinely humiliated for incorrectly performing the masculinity that comes naturally to Dusty (Mark Wahlberg), the biological father of his stepchildren.

Where the earlier film pitted Brad and Dusty against each other in a competition to prove their worth as fathers, the new film finds them seamlessly trading off parenting duties as ?co-dads.? That is, until Brad and Dusty?s own fathers?Jonah (John Lithgow) and Kurt (Mel Gibson), respectively?join them and their families for a Christmastime cabin retreat. Brad and Jonah are openly and, in the film?s eyes, uncomfortably affectionate, greeting each other with a long, hard kiss on the lips?an image Anders treats as a Farrelly brothers-level gross-out gag. Dusty and Kurt, on the other hand, have a cold and resentful relationship, due largely to the fact that Kurt spent more time getting drunk and picking up barflies than raising his son.

The film portrays parenting as the death of manhood, a final surrender to the castrating effects of domesticity. Only those who patently refuse the responsibilities of fatherhood, as Kurt has done his entire life, maintain their virility. Meanwhile, those like Brad and Jonah who happily embrace their parenting duties are deemed effeminate weirdos and are accordingly subjected to all manner of wild slapstick violence, from a wolf attack to repeated snowball beatings to temporary death by electrocution. While the film ultimately pays some lip service to Brad and Jonah?s gregariousness, emotional availability, and supportive parenting style, that?s only after 90 minutes of mocking these traits as embarrassing character defects.

No film that features Ferrell, Lithgow, and Wahlberg is likely to be completely free of laughs, and indeed it?s hard not to at least crack a smile at some of their quirkier moments here: Wahlberg blithely wrapping his tongue around the script?s goofy wordplay; Lithgow warbling the delivery of the punchline (?buttquack?) to a kids? joke; and Ferrell?s rubbery facial contortions as Brad hopelessly attempts to hold back tears. This sequel also wisely expands the role of Brad? Watch Daddy's Home 2 2017 , Sara (Linda Cardellini), which allows for at least a few moments to explore the comedic possibilities of feminine insecurity. But ultimately these actors are locked into a formulaic, over-plotted Hollywood comedy that favors outsized set pieces, like a runaway snow blower tearing through Christmas decorations, over subtle actorly moments.

And, just as importantly, the actors have to work around Gibson, whose limp hound-dog shtick always feels a step behind his colleagues. It doesn?t help that the film fetishizes Kurt as a roguish man?s man while trading on Gibson?s off-screen reputation as a bad boy, a distinction he earned in part from the infamous racist and sexist tirades that kept him out of the Hollywood spotlight for years. Pairing him up with Wahlberg, who has his own history of racist abuse, only serves to underline the most toxic aspects of the film?s subtext?that callousness and violence are cool masculine qualities, while caring and compassion are effeminate and lame.

The Nun movie cast: Taissa Farmiga, Demian Bichir, Jonas Bloquet The Nun movie director: Corin Hardy The Nun movie rating: 2 stars

Conjuring a younger Vera Farmiga alone doesn?t a horror movie make. And so while this film, that is yet another rip-off of The Conjuring series (director James Wan is writer here), has that actress? watch the nun 2018 in lead role, it has none of its chills or thrills.

What it has is a lot of Church, with the entire film happening in an abandoned abbey in Romania. And a lot of nuns, especially the scary one who lingered in the shadows in the last Conjuring, and hence was set to get a film of her own. Called upon by the Vatican to solve the goings-on at the abbey are Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) and a World War 2-hardened priest, Father Burke (Bichir). For 1952, the Vatican appears to be very well-informed about churches even in the remotest part of the world, where even the locals don?t venture.

Hell, damnation, heaven, evil, dark ages, blood of Christ are just words of normal conversation once the duo make their way to the abbey ? escorted by a Frenchman (Bloquet), who is there to be just there. And where sane people would dread to step in (a door helpfully says, ?God ends here?), the two proceed to have some wine and dinner in an abandoned convent next to a graveyard, next to the abbey. Soon it?s pouring nuns from all corners, gliding, whispering, bleeding, cracking, praying, screaming.

Exactly why, no one is sure.

As frequently as we?ve recently seen onscreen kidnappers holding their captives in bunkers hidden from the outside world (seriously, so many times, let?s hope it?s a vast overrepresentation of reality) few stories have dealt with the fact that some people take to basements better than others. Sure, a basement is a horrifying place to imagine living out years of your life cut off from society, but it?s also where so many socially unsure young people have voluntarily retreated to curl up in the arms of comfort media, far from the sun, where the hours and weeks can pass unnoticed. For Brigsby Bear?s James (Saturday Night Livecast member Kyle Mooney), it?s a little of both: He was kidnapped, unbeknownst to him, as an infant, and his new ?parents? have kept him sheltered from society in an underground bunker, where his only cultural interaction is with the titular fictional (in more ways than one) children?s adventure show.

From the jump, the film, which was co-written by Mooney and his friend Kevin Costello, sets the concept and quirk bar extremely high. These are such improbable, specific circumstances that one?s first impulse is to keep Brigsby Bearat arm?s length. But at every fork along the way, Mooney and director Dave McCary choose the intimate over the arch, while still maintaining a fragile sort of dark humor. This is a film that is asking much trickier questions than it would ever let on about the coddling effect of media and geek obsession, and the purging effect of storytelling.

We open with an episode of the show itself, a warbly VHS creation starring Brigsby Bear, who teaches lessons about sharing and caring while embroiled in an impossibly byzantine struggle against an evil sun god. Like any long-running show that you happen to jump into on the 700th episode, it?s largely unintelligible, but there are also other tip-offs that something more sinister may be afoot, down to the oddly specific end-of-episode morals about trash disposal and its insistence that ?curiosity is an unnatural emotion.? From there, we meet James, who is diligently recording his latest video recap for the ?Brigsby Bear fan community? before joining his ?parents? for dinner, where they shake hands and toast to each other?s mental fortitude and James recounts the latest Brigsby episode. Even before we realize the scope of James?s circumstances, we understand that the show comprises the vast majority of his life experience: How to speak, how to interpret events, and even his first and only crush, are all informed by what he watches on his TV every day. It would feel outlandish if it weren?t a mere exaggeration of how almost all us have grown up in front of the screen.

A perhaps more overtly meta factor of James?s endlessly metaphorical kidnapping is that his false father Ted is played by none other than Mark Hamill, a figure who has been burned into the psyche of generations of children, basement-dwelling and otherwise. It?s a fascinating choice for a film that walks all the way up to painting pop-cultural indoctrination as a form of emotional abuse, and geek obsession as trauma, before pulling back and turning it into an avenue for healing. When Ted and his wife, April (Jane Adams, underutilized), are busted and their compound raided, James is sent to live with his biological parents (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins) and his nouveau Daria teen sister (Ryan Simpkins.) James?s first instinct (in marked contrast to his contemporary Kimmy Schmidt) is to retreat into himself, overwhelmed by so many new people and sensations. All he wants is the next Brigsby tape, and is horrified to learn the truth of the show?s origins.

When confronted with the cold hard fact that there will be no more episodes, James?s initial response is denial, and his second response is action. He enlists his sister and her friends, as well as a detective with dashed stage dreams (Greg Kinnear), to help him create the ultimate Brigsby Bear finale. For those charged with ushering James into the real world, this presents a dilemma: Should he be made to let go of the fictional universe his captors stunted him with? Or has he struck upon a healthier way to work through it?

James speaks in Mooney?s deadpan vocal fry, and is monosyllabic when asked to participate in routine activities, but when he begins talking about his beloved bear, the words pour out of him almost like vomit; he stutters and trips over himself with enthusiasm. It elicits more than a few excruciating laugh-out-loud moments, but it? ThanosTV and vulnerable ? not to mention frequently unpleasant. Brigsby Bear will inevitably be sold as an oh-so-random stoner cult movie, but what Mooney and McCary are getting at, with this nothing-if-not-original story of how mythologies shape us, is something uncomfortably real and of the moment.

The third outing for Atkinson?s parody James Bond would seem ideal for the floundering Brexit era ? but it largely fails to rise to the occasion

It?s traditional now to look for Brexit significances in any new film with a British slant and that does seem applicable to this revival of the Johnny English action-comedy spoof franchise ? which started back in 2003 with Johnny English and spluttered back to life in 2011 with Johnny English Reborn. Will tongue-in-cheek self-satire on the subject of how obviously rubbish we are be the nation?s new export opportunity?

At any rate, the pop-eyed, rubber-faced incompetent Johnny English has had his licence to cock things up renewed for the second time ? that name of his signalling more than anything else that he is a broad comic creation designed for non-English-speaking cinemagoing territories.

He is of course the daft secret agent who despite his bizarre pretensions to smoothie glamour has got a little bit of Clouseau, a dash of Mr Bean and a dollop of that chap contributing a single note to the Chariots of Fire theme tune at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. He?s also originally based on the traveller and international man of mystery Atkinson once played in the now forgotten Barclaycard TV ads, leaving chaos in his wake.

There are one or two nice moments in this latest JE outing. watch johnny english strikes again 2018 loved Johnny English approaching a helicopter while dressed in a medieval suit of armour and the rotor blades briefly clanging against his helmet. Atkinson?s gift for physical comedy is on display, but the humour feels pretty underpowered and weirdly superfluous, especially as the ?serious? film brands like 007 and Mission Impossible themselves now confidently offer comedy as an ingredient. The humour feels as if it is pitched at kids rather than adults, and for me Johnny English?s wacky misadventures aren?t as inventive and focused as Atkinson?s silent-movie gags in the persona of Bean.

The perennially topical premise now is that Great Britain is in serious trouble. A cyber-hacker has infiltrated Britain?s super-secret web network of spies, revealing the identities of all Britain?s agents in the field, to the dismay of the agent on duty ? a regrettably small role for Kevin Eldon.

It?s the last straw for a prime minister who is a pompous and embattled figure, already suffering a complete meltdown of political unpopularity: Emma Thompson does her very best with this quasi-Teresa-May character but there?s nothing much in the script to work with. Her intelligence advisers inform her that as every single active spy has been compromised, she will have to bring someone out of retirement. And that means bumbling Johnny English himself, now employed as a schoolmaster in some posh establishment, but giving off-the-record lessons in how to be an undercover operative: some nice gags here, as English offers a School of Rock-type academy of spying.

English is whisked back to Whitehall for an emergency briefing and reunited with his former long-suffering sidekick Bough, played again by Ben Miller. Bough is now a married man, hitched to a submarine commander, a jolly-hockey-sticks role in which Vicki Pepperdine is a bit wasted. So the Batman and Robin of getting things terribly wrong on Her Majesty?s Secret Service are back in action, encountering Olga Kurylenko?s beautiful femme fatale Ophelia Bulletova. Meanwhile, the prime minister is falling dangerously under the spell of the charismatic tech billionaire who claims he can solve Britain?s computer woes: the sinister Jason Volta, played by Jake Lacy.

English and Bough begin their odyssey of farcical high-jinks: disguised as waiters, they set fire to a flash French restaurant; they create mayhem smuggling themselves aboard Volta?s luxury yacht; and English triggers pure anarchy as he attempts to use a Virtual Reality headset to familiarise himself with the interior of Volta?s house. All the stops are certainly pulled out for that last sequence, but as amiable and boisterous as it is, there?s quite a bit of kids? TV about the whole thing.

Pretty moderate stuff. And as with the other Johnny English films I couldn?t help thinking: can?t the British film industry give Rowan Atkinson a role that really does justice to his talent?

There is a breed of British horror films/shows that are quite unlike anything else. Drawing influences from classic horror and incorporating surreal elements, they also keep a foot firmly in social realism and often reflect current economic images of a broken Britain.

The TV show The League of Gentleman (1999 onwards) blended the bizarre with a set of grotesque characters and storylines, but confined them within a familiar village setting that became more dilapidated as the series progressed. More recently the film Ghost Stories (2017) offered a three-part portmanteau of chilling supernatural tales, recalling a long past English structure akin to the Ealing classic Dead of Night (1945). Along with Andy Nyman, the film is directed by Jeremy Dyson, one of the co-creators of The League of Gentlemen, and it shares a kindred spirit of offbeat, eerie territory with the show. But its stories are also wrapped within fragments of modern Britain, in rundown buildings, empty pubs and bleak seaside towns.

Coming into this terrain is Possum, which continues the feel of old British horror in a derelict setting and which combines surreal imagery. It is a film whose bleak backdrop is matched by a jet-black psyche.

Possum begins with the narration of a poem against an opening title sequence that evokes an old ?70s feel. https://www.thanostv.org/movie/possum-2018 of dark water and woodlands create an unsettling mood, accompanied by a brooding soundtrack. We are first introduced to Philip (Sean Harris), a disgraced puppeteer who is on the train, returning to his childhood home and who is carrying an ominous leather bag. He tries to interact with a teenage boy, but he comes across awkward and stilted. It is easy to see how he may have fallen on hard times, but hard to imagine how he was ever a children?s entertainer.

When he reaches his home, it is neglected and ramshackle, like it has been frozen in time since he was last there, and things immediately start getting strange. Images of black balloons that become shrouded in smoke envelope the screen and Phillip?s bag, containing the eponymous puppet Possum, seems to have a life of itself; it moves from place to place, from where Phillip last left it.

When Philip is reunited with his vindictive uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong) it is evident that their relationship is fraught and at the root of some of Philip?s internal distress, as they play out the roles of bully and the bullied. Back home, Philip has decided to try and rid his life of his puppet creation, but this proves to be an impossible task, as Possum continues to reappear every time he has seemingly been disregarded. Meanwhile the disappearance of a local teenage boy causes Maurice to suspect Philip of foul play, and Philip himself begins to question everything. Repressed childhood traumas start to reemerge and his grip on reality hangs perilously in the balance, as Possum appears to be the one driving and consuming his existence.

Possum is the first feature film of Matthew Holness, the creator of the wonderous cult horror spoof Garth Merenghi?s Dark Place, and whilst the film conjures up a retro feel, there is no humour to be found in this dark heart. Whilst not an intentional period piece, the aesthetic of Possum continually leans towards a ?70s horror look with the absence of any modern signifiers such as mobile phones or up-to-date technology. This enhances the disturbing atmosphere of the film. Along with the barren setting of Norfolk marshland, the weeds beneath the surface elude to the clinging, binding ties that continually threaten to pull Philip down. Scenes of disused and abandoned buildings give the impression that this is not a place where any hope springs; it is instead a place where people become consumed, trapped and plagued by demons.

The score is provided by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, known for their pioneering and experimental technology and electronic music, and it is suitably disturbing and unnerving, matching the murky darkness of the film and building at points to an unbearable crescendo.

Sean Harris, perhaps best known to audiences as villain Solomon Lane from the last two Mission Impossible films, has cultivated a career around his outsider looks and Possum is no exception. However, this time instead of exuding a sinister edge, he is a man who seems haunted by every step he takes. His internal anguish is etched all over his face, his red rimmed eyes and ghostly pale demeanour matched by a hunched, almost twisted physique, which becomes more pronounced the more he tries to distance himself from Possum. It is as though the two are so intrinsically linked that Philip begins to suffer withdrawal after from his creation, the age old saying ?you can?t live with them, you can?t live without them? ringing true of their twisted relationship.

Whilst Harris is on intensely troubled form, the performance that will worryingly linger in your memory is that of Possum itself. First shown to the audience in fragments, the giant spider like legs sprawling out of the bag and then in full form with a doll like head atop the tarantula body, Possum is the stuff of real nightmares. It could have come straight from Jan Svankmajer?s warped workshop, and will no doubt come to the viewer in the darkest corners of our troubled dreams.

Holness has created a new modern horror figure for our time that could stand alongside recent scaremongers such as The Babadook. It is a shame, then, that the rest of the film cannot quite match the intense power of this puppet. Recurring themes and motifs become a little too recurring as we, along with Philip, become locked in a continual cycle of scenes which, for a film with a short running time, will test the patience of many.

Possum is an impressively chilling debut from Holness and credit must go to the director for taking a risk on a darker affair. The initial premise could have been adapted for a comedy/horror audience, taking the route of the possessed puppet and playing into Holness? previous work of combining humour in a horror setting. Instead he has gone for a much more sombre palette, one that will not appeal to many but will garner respect from others. Perhaps Possum would have worked better as a short film; its message would have easily come across to chilling effect if it did not dwell on the same scenes repeatedly.

Rather than a cult following, it is a film that will be hard to return to due to its eternally gloomy atmosphere, focusing so intently on one person?s anguish it is a tough watch to subject yourself to. Instead it will be regarded as a very British curio, a niche in the vast landscape of the bourgeoning modern horror world.

Do distinctly British horror films interest you? Will you give Possum a watch?

Possum was released in the UK on 26 October 2018, and will be released in the US in theaters and VOD on November 2nd.

To continue reading the review and all of the highly detailed, scene-by-scene listings of the sex, nudity, profanity, violence and more (15 categories): or Just $7.95/month or $47/year I have subscribed to ScreenIt for more than a decade. I check in every week to take advantage of their amazing services. Not only does their site provide a glimpse of exactly what content a movie offers, I've found the ?Our Take? reviews and ratings for each movie to be right on the money every single time. I've referred dozens of friends to this service because my #1 resource for deciding whether or not to show a movie to my kids, or to see one myself, is ScreenIt.com! Josh Nisbet Director, State of CA Public Sector I signed up to get Screen It weekly reviews a long time ago, when my kids were young and I wanted to know more about movies before we went to a theater or rented. Now one child is in law school, other in undergraduate, and I still read the weekly Screen Its! It helps me know what my husband and I want to see or rent, and what to have waiting at home that we all will enjoy when my "kids" come home. I depend on Screen It reviews. They usually just present the facts and let me decide if the movie is appropriate or of interest for my family and me. Thank you for providing that service, Screen It! Patti Petree Winston Salem, NC I have 4 children who are now in college. Watch A-X-L 2018 signed up for Screen It when my children were pre-teenagers. Often my children would ask to see a movie with a friend and I wished I could preview the movie prior to giving permission. A friend told me about ScreenIt.com and I found it to be the next best thing to previewing a movie. The amount of violence, sexual content, or language were always concerns for me and my husband as we raised innocent kids with morals. We constantly fought the peer pressure our kids received to see films that in our opinion were questionable. With the evidence we received at Screen It, our kids couldn't even fight us when we felt a film may have been inappropriate for them to watch. Thank you, Screen It. Continue to make this helpful service available to everyone, but especially the young parents. Christine Doherty Machesney Park, IL Screenit.com is an amazing resource for parents, educators, church groups or anyone who wants to make an informed decision whether a movie is suitable for their viewing. The reviews and content descriptions are so detailed I am mystified how the reviewers can put them together. Scott Heathe Vancouver, BC I love screen It! I don't know what I would do without it. It is well worth the membership. Before we take our son to the movies we check it out on screen it first. Thank you SO much for making it. Keep up the good work & keep 'em coming!!! Patrina Streety Moreno Valley California

With 2011?s Like Crazy, writer-director Drake Doremus announced himself as a skilled observer of the heart-swelling highs and soul-crushing lows of being in a relationship. Specifically in that film, the minute intricacies of being in a long-distance relationship played out by Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin. It picked up the grand jury prize at Sundance and while the buzz didn?t translate at the box office, it led to Doremus landing a string of starry follow-ups.

While Breathe In, which paired Jones with Guy Pearce, was a moderate critical success, with each ensuing film, Doremus?s star started to fade. Despite a splashy premiere at the Venice film festival and a cast headed up by Kristen Stewart, Equals was a misfire and the following year saw a muted reaction at Sundance to Nicholas Hoult in Newness, later dumped with little fanfare on Netflix.

In his latest, premiering at the Tribeca film festival, Doremus returns to themes that he is now become synonymous with. Like his previous projects, it?s an examination of modern romance and like 2015?s Equals, there?s an added sci-fi bent. In the near future, synthetic humans have become commonplace additions to society. While most inhabit service roles, making drinks and cutting grass, one company has mastered a higher class of robot, virtually indistinguishable from the humans around them. Zoe (L�a Seydoux) works in this lab alongside designer Cole (Ewan McGregor) and the two share a light workplace flirtation.

But underneath the surface lies a secret, something that prevents Zoe and Cole from progressing any further. When Zoe takes a compatibility test at work to check who would make a match for her, Cole is forced to tell her the truth: Zoe isn?t human. With Zoe now aware of who and what she is, so comes a re-examination of the world around her and her place within it. While initially Cole tries to fight his attraction to her, he soon relents and the pair forge ahead into uncharted territory.

There?s ThanosTV -expanding subgenre of films that imagine a future where dating and relationships have been irrevocably affected by technology. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Marjorie Prime, Her, The Lobster and Black Mirror?s Hang the DJ all existed in this heightened territory and all managed to find identifiable truths wrapped up in fantastical packaging. The world created within Zoe exists alongside these, not too dissimilar to the one we?re in now but with a clear, profound difference. Given the rise of AI and, more specifically, the rise of AI aimed at decreasing loneliness, there?s a timeliness to the events that take place in Zoe.

The company at the center of the story creates a range of products that feel a mere modification away from many that are being developed at the moment. There?s a pleasingly casual nature to the way that tech is embedded within the story. While some exposition is a bit clumsy, the world feels mostly well-constructed and easy to believe. It?s not hard to see the appeal of an aesthetically pleasing partner who, as the employees keep reminding us, will never break your heart or leave you. The characters here are weathered by heartbreak, tired of disappointment and looking for something or someone to believe in.

Doremus, and screenwriter Richard Greenberg, have packed their film with intriguing questions. How much of tech is biased by its creator? Is compatibility able to be predicted through an algorithm? How much perfection does one really want in a partner? But while the script?s early observations are delivered with subtlety, as the film progresses others are given a more heavy-handed touch. One of the products in the film is a pill that mimics the sensation of falling in love so couples either take it to briefly recapture their early romance or strangers take it for a more intense sexual high. As with Doremus?s last film Newness, this world of easily accessible casual sex becomes emotionally destructive but the script doesn?t get much further than that hardly earth-shattering conclusion. Although it does allow us to see a robo-brothel with a strange, underwhelming cameo from Christina Aguilera as an android of the night.

One of the bigger problems here is how easy it becomes to compare Zoe with better, richer films of its ilk. The social commentary feels somewhat shallow compared to the perceptive nature of Her or Eternal Sunshine or even a number of episodes of Black Mirror. It?s so stylishly made that one wishes the world on screen could have housed a more emotionally complex story to match.

At its core, there?s a strong, haunted performance from McGregor playing a man wearing his heart and his emotional baggage on full display and at times, he has a naturalistic flirtatious rapport with a striking Seydoux. Yet the film demands so much investment in their relationship that when events lurch into rockier territory, the shift is so sudden that it?s difficult to really feel what is required. There?s also an underused Rashida Jones as McGregor?s understanding ex, a somewhat meaningless role for Theo James as a curious experiment and a campy turn from Miranda Otto as a madam.

Zoe is an attractively made yet dour and often shallow look at love that muddles along when it should be searing a hole. It?s an impressive shell that needs a bigger heart.

A scholar of Yasujiro Ozu and born in Korea, the filmmaker Kogonada makes a striking debut with Columbus, a movie about architecture nerds that is itself composed like great architecture. In Columbus, Ohio, all the other high school grads are leaving town, but Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) has no plans to go anywhere for the fall. She's works in the library with literate, masters-degree holder Gabriel (Rory Culkin) and goes to visit her favorite buildings. She has convinced herself that she likes it here, but the real reason is that her mom (Michelle Forbes) is unstable, an addict with bad taste in men, and Casey feels the need to look after her. Meanwhile, a famous professor collapses and his son Jin (John Cho) is summoned from Korea to be by his bedside. Although https://www.thanostv.org/movie/columbus-2017 had an old crush on the professor's assistant (Parker Posey), he spends time wandering around town, where he runs into Casey. The two begin a thoughtful friendship, each learning to question the other's excuses and decisions. Their conversations are carefully staged and framed, using wide shots and gorgeous compositions; it tries hard to equate structures with the different facets in the relationship. And while it's all quite accomplished, I can't say I loved it. The characters remain on an analytical level and the intensity that their relationship might have reached just isn't there (you can feel the lack of it when they part). Regardless, I liked Columbus quite a bit and will note Kogonada as a director to watch.

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On ne va pas s?�tendre sur ce cinqui�me opus de la franchise. Cinopsis TAXI avait le m�rite de la nouveaut�, avec ce petit c�t� franchouillard faisant du second degr� sur l?amour des bagnoles made in USA, et aussi celui d?avoir fait conna�tre Marion Cotillard dans ses premi�res oeuvres, ce TAXI 5 frise le palmar�s en terme de m�diocrit�!

Entre le vomi, le scato et le mauvais go�t pur et simple (sans doute un hommage aux com�dies am�ricaines qui aiment en abuser), TAXI 5 nous offre aussi des dialogues indigents, des gags foireux en veux-tu en voil�, des r�flexions machistes en pleine crise Weinstein (la comparaison des filles et des bagnoles a fait long feu) et un sc�nario inexistant. M�me les sc�nes d? Cinopsis .

Que demander de plus � Frank Gastambide (LA SURFACE DE REPARATION) qui est derri�re la cam�ra, devant aussi et surtout au sc�nario? enfin, comme il n?y en a pas, ce dernier point se discute. La seule chose � faire serait d?�viter de perdre son argent en salle mais l?on sait qu?h�las, ce TAXI 5 risque en plus de faire des entr�es.

Et si l?on en croit le m�chant italien du film qui jette � Sylvain Marot un ?on se reverra? � la fin du film, on risque m�me d?avoir un Taxi 6.

Like Fox Mulder, the Lone Gunmen, and the characters in director Justin Barber’s feature debut, I want to believe. Specifically, I want to believe that the found-footage horror genre is coming to an end. Also, discovering Bigfoot somewhere in, I dunno, Portlandia probably, would be equally wonderful. But belief can be a bitch that way: zero Sasquatch and Phoenix Forgotten add up to me siding with Dana Scully on a particularly cynical day.

Barber and co-writer T.S. Nowlin have based this very Blair Witch-y film on actual events, namely the widely reported mass sighting of mysterious lights hovering over the Phoenix desert in 1997. Barber blends actual, amateur-shot footage of the glowing orbs into real and restaged news coverage, and then introduces Sophie (Hartigan), the younger sister of Josh (Roberts), who along with high school pals Ashley (Lopez) and Mark (Matthews), went missing 20 years ago while searching for the source of the unexplained aerial phenomena. Ostensibly making https://www.thanostv.org/movie/forgotten-2017 about the missing kids, Sophie gets the brush-off from the military, interviews UFO true believers, and ultimately finds the trio’s melted video camera and a cache of long-lost tapes that may explain what happened to her brother and his friends on that fateful night. From there on out, Phoenix Forgotten is borderline generic, desert-set found footage that apes the aforementioned Witchiness and genre constraints to a snooze-worthy T.

Ridley Scott, who has a different, presumably less mediocre alien movie of his own arriving in theatres soon, is listed as one of this film’s many producers, though it’s unclear why he signed on to a project that, while ambitious and occasionally unnerving, ultimately relies on a woefully exhausted narrative involving shaky-cam footage of teens getting lost in the dark. As the teens, Hartigan, Roberts, and Matthews are appealingly real, but the dual, interlocking storylines of Sophie’s intent to unravel the mystery of her brother’s disappearance and the two-decades-old footage bring nothing new or pulse-pounding to this genre. The 2009 abduction-by-alien-grays movie The Fourth Kind played fast and loose with these genre tropes and, in retrospect, was far more interesting, not to mention creepy. Bored with nothing to do on a rainy Sunday? Go rent William Cameron Menzies’ superlatively surreal Invaders From Mars or you-know-who’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Those are but two of the UFO genre’s films that you can really believe in.

Review by Adam Tyner | posted May 10, 2018 | E-mail the Author [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] It's a page out of history [click on any of these thumbnails to enlarge] Howl's Moving Castleany [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] (and also voicing Gorilla Grodd for the first time) tl;dr (...although that's an option too, if you want it.) [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] (SDH for the English adaptation as well as a proper translation of the Japanese audio) [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] New York Comic Con Presents Batman Ninja : Screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima, character designer Takashi Okazaki, and director Junpei Mizusaki are joined by English screenwriters Leo Chu and Eric Garcia for this NYCC panel. Among the topics of discussion here are the genesis of Batman Ninja, the perception of Batman in Japan, how the filmmakers honored these characters while still giving them a unique spin very much their own, what the most difficult character was to direct, the score by Y�go Kanno, and how the fight choreography draws in part from live-action reference footage. Chu and Garcia delve into the challenges of adapting Batman Ninja into English, especially given that animation can sometimes be underway before even the Japanese dialogue is written. The English language voice actors weren't ready to be announced as this panel was underway, which does put a damper on the conversation. The panel discussion is followed by a Q&A session. Batman: Made in Japan : The first of Batman Ninja's featurettes focuses primarily on character design, and I particularly enjoyed hearing what elements ? whether it's from history or from your favorite Batman comics ? helped to shape https://www.thanostv.org/movie/batman-ninja-2018 of these characters. For example, Lord Joker draws in part from Dutch colonialists, while Robin's hairstyle mirrors that of Daigoro in . [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] East/West Batman : While "Made in Japan" concentrates on character design, "East/West Batman" delves into most everything else: how key elements of the Dark Knight translate so wonderfully to Japanese storytelling, how deeply the premise draws from history, the exploration of what Batman is when stripped of his arsenal and technology, cross-cultural influences, how the sound design extends to the thoughtful use of silence, the film being driven more by its visuals than by its narrative, and...hey, video game boss intros and colossal robot battles! soHighly Recommended.