The director almost seems to struggle between wanting to present a relative and convincing documentary yet slides into a goofy and aloof crime caper that is most wanting and where the ninety-five-minute run time is lightest of sentencing.
Tag: Netflix
Polar
The film is Irish-carbomb crazy; chopped meat that’s charbroiled yet still pink-on-the-inside, along with plenty of extra cheese.
Five Came Back
War, what is it good for, the song asks. Absolutely nothing? Perhaps. But back in the 1940s, it was a nearly essential response to depose an abomination and dismantle his fear machine. American forces quickly learned that other than boots on the ground and bombs in the air, one of the best ways to win…
Triple Frontier
Stop me if you’ve heard this already. Batman, Poe Dameron, and King Arthur walk into a bar. They team-up to stop a vile drug lord and rob him along the way. Rather dynamic, right? Top flight action stars. Type-A leaders with machismo laced on each fiber of beard scruff. Good avenging evil and making a…
Velvet Buzzsaw
Nightcrawler was frightening and creepy. In that film, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a rogue videographer who caters his services to network head Renee Russo. Theirs is a relationship of use and abuse, and a partnership of drawing in money and building a rep. Nightcrawler is a film that prompts heavy conversation, or a shower, which makes…
Roma
Forget Alfonso Cuarón’s smooth camera work and his technical attention and his ability to wreak havoc in the background while his foregrounds remain calm and focused. Instead, watch Roma and pay attention to Cuarón the photographer who can bring beauty and life to a million shades of gray. Filmed in a black-and-white palate that is…
Happy As Lazzaro
An odd yet beautiful film. However, its morality play center and rambling narrative diminishes the film’s quirkiness The first act of the Italian film Happy As Lazzaro focuses on naïve, worker-bee Lazzaro, an all-around good-guy who’s as gullible as Charlie Brown. He, along with his fellow working community, is exploited by a tobacco heiress as…
Extinction
The alien invasion plot is an industry standard that is now as boilerplate as Batman’s origin and Netflix’s Extinction upholds this formula in a by-the-books thriller yet manages to present the film in a slick and entertaining way. Yes, there is a plot twist deep in the third act that is satisfying and, believe it or not,…
ANON: SciFi blast for cliché crime caper
The future can be scary, and that’s exactly how writer/director Andrew Niccol (Gattica) likes it. Niccol’s latest, Anon, directly distributed by Netflix, takes social media privacy scares and concerns and makes those issues a substantial threat as every event every single person sees is stored forever in an Orwell-ian cloud. Anon presents an original, albeit…
