Unlikable characters are difficult to get right, because their personalities inherently repel the viewer. So when a movie features a protagonist that is, on paper, entirely unlikable, what is a filmmaker to do? The answer: hire a great actor to make the character so believable that the audience finds truth in them, even if they […]
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“End of Watch” is a superlative cop film by way of the war movie. That’s not an exaggeration, as its two protagonists, beat officers in the worst part of Los Angeles, patrol an area that seems just about as foreign and violent to most Americans as Afghanistan. The movie departs from the cop genre of
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Horror movies are notorious magnets for unruly audience members. The common wisdom is that this is because they are generally made for the demographics most likely to disrupt the viewing experience with loud chatter, bright cell phone screens, and/or overly mobile children. But perhaps it is more a sign of the quality of the movies
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The bulk of films about white, upper-middle-class, suburban malaise in America–most notably Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”–are paradoxical in that they explore internalized suffering through externalized, emotive storytelling, wherein even a blank stare comes charged with the assumption of dramatic suffering taking place underneath it. This is a form borrowed from the Douglas Sirk melodramas of
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In a year from now, “You May Not Kiss the Bride” will make for decent background noise when it inevitably airs on Lifetime, the channel that you only happen upon on lazy Sunday mornings when you’re nursing a hangover with Bisquick pancakes. Yes, I mean Bisquick pancakes specifically, because anyone with enough intellect to pick
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“Compliance” is an intentionally maddening, excruciatingly tense thriller that posits a notion I can’t totally agree with. Its story, which sees the morality of ordinary, law-abiding citizens wither under the instruction of a purported authority figure, suggests that nearly anyone is susceptible to following vile, outrageous orders if only they’re told to. Certainly, this is
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In “Trouble with the Curve,” Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams play father and daughter Gus and Mickey Lobel — cartoon character-esque names that were undoubtedly created by screenwriter Randy Brown under the presumption that if he were to pick plainer ones, the viewer would instantly forget them and think of the duo not as characters, but
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Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk with Me” is structured like a standard narrative feature, but that’s just a thin veil covering what it actually is: a personal essay. Anyone familiar with Birbiglia’s popular stand-up act knows that he has trouble avoiding the titular behavior of the film–he slumbers in a sleeping-bag zipped up to his neck, wearing
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A typical documentary seeks to uncover truths about a given subject, be it the war in Iraq, a renegade graffiti artist, or the status of the American education system. “The Imposter” does exactly this, but not in the way that the viewer first expects. Director Bart Layton takes a traditional mystery premise and turns it
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“Resident Evil: Retribution” is a certain sort of movie. This is the sort of movie in which the body count would be measured in the hundreds, if anyone were to take on such a Herculean task. This is the sort of movie in which the named characters stroll down narrow corridors against thousands of rounds
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