Movie Reviews

Hugh Jackman, and wig, play Gary Hart in Jason Reitman's The Front Runner.

Arts

'The Front Runner' Stumbles Into Familiar Territory

7:24pm November 08, 2018

by Scott Tobias

The film follows Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) through his three-week presidential bid that fell victim to monkey business, but what director Jason Reitman brings to it is familiar — even quaint.

Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine) surveys his phalanx in Outlaw King.

Arts

In Netflix's War Epic 'Outlaw King' There's Plenty Of War, But Not Much That's Epic

5:00pm November 08, 2018

by Andrew Lapin

Director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) keeps the scale too small and the stakes too low in this retelling of the rebellion of Scotland's Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine).

"Welcome to my pallor, said the spider to the fly": Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) goes beyond the pale in The Girl in the Spider's Web.

Arts

'The Girl In The Spider's Web' Struggles To Break Free Of Techno-Thriller Cliches

5:00pm November 08, 2018

by Mark Jenkins

Claire Foy takes over the role of Swedish super-hacker Lisbeth Salander in a reboot that reheats stale ideas from many previous spy/hacker movies.

Arts

Inside This Deceptively Simple Story Lurks A 'Burning' Psychological Thriller

1:25pm November 06, 2018

by Justin Chang

Director Lee Chang-dong's film centers on two young men and the woman who brings them together. Critic Justin Chang calls Burning the most absorbing — and enigmatic — new movie he's seen all year.

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Outsized Music Personalities Featured In 'Bohemian Rhapsody' And 'Maria By Callas'

5:58pm November 02, 2018

by Bob Mondello

In the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek plays Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock group Queen. In the documentary Maria by Callas, opera singer Maria Callas speaks for herself through letters and interviews.

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Rosamund Pike plays war correspondent Marie Colvin in A Private War.

Arts

'A Private War': Combat Takes Its Merciless Toll On A Tireless War Correspondent

5:01pm November 01, 2018

by Mark Jenkins

To play the Sunday Times war reporter Marie Colvin, Rosamund Pike "transform[s] herself into a singular figure, one who goes places few people would and see[s] things that even fewer could handle."

Adam (Calum Worthy) and his rap battle mentor Behn Grymm (Jackie Long) in Bodied.

Arts

Once More Unto The Beat: A Grad Student Enters The World Of Rap Battles In 'Bodied'

5:00pm November 01, 2018

by Scott Tobias

"It's juvenile. It's irritating. Yet it's also fiendishly clever in the way it anticipates and dismantles every argument that could be made against it," says critic Scott Tobias.

Xavier (Theodore Pellerin) and Jared (Lucas Hedges) share a fleeting moment of intimacy in the gay-conversion-therapy drama Boy Erased.

Arts

Strong Performances Make 'Boy Erased' Indelible

5:00pm November 01, 2018

by Ella Taylor

Actor Joel Edgerton adapts for the screen a 2016 memoir about a teenager undergoing "gay conversion therapy;" he also directs and stars in this "intelligent message movie."

The documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead profiles a late-in-life Orson Welles as he struggles to complete The Other Side of the Wind.

Arts

A Guide To Netflix's Orson Welles Mini-Fest: A Long-Unfinished Film And A Documentary About It

5:00pm November 01, 2018

by Andrew Lapin

Welles' abandoned Hollywood satire The Other Side of the Wind hits Netflix and select theaters alongside the new making-of documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead; the two films inform each other.

No Time For Losers: Brian May (Gwilym Lee), Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) and John Deacon (Joe Mazzello) sing the praises of callipygian females in Bohemian Rhapsody.

No Bed Of Roses, No Pleasure Cruise: 'Bohemian Rhapsody'

2:36pm November 01, 2018

by Glen Weldon

A fearless performance from Rami Malek and rock-solid rock anthems can't lift this listless musical biopic out of the sea of clichés in which it treads water.