So if you’re feeling angry or appalled about George Zimmerman being found not guilty over the shooting of Trayvon Martin, one way of channeling your feelings is to go see Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station, a fact-based drama about a similar case in which a young black dude got plugged by a non-cop with a gun, in part because the black dude got angry and mouthed off but definitely didn’t deserve a bullet? Is that what’s happening? I’m not denying or arguing with the linkage — I’m just asking if people out there are doing the same kind of math and going “shit, I gotta see this film.”
I’m presuming that the voiceover in this British teaser for Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (Weinstein Co., 1.29) is Idris Elba‘s Nelson Mandela voice and not the Real McCoy. If so, I’m impressed. The voice and the children running across the wide-open fields and the old man with the white hair. There’s something about Elba that just won’t pop, but this film could change that.
So Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim is being projected to earn just shy of $40 million by late tonight, which puts it in third place behind the #1 Despicable Me 2 (a film that doesn’t exist and never will exist in my head…it might as well be a swarm of African mosquitoes for all the attention it’s getting here) and the second-place Grown Ups 2. Here’s my 7.8 review. Critical assessments are hereby requested. Could anyone buy the idea of a flying Kaiju? Or a Jeager falling from 25 miles above the earth’s surface and landing more or less intact?

To me, the words in passing that revealed who George Zimmerman was and where he was coming from were spoken in the early evening of 2.26.12, or minutes before Zimmerman accosted, fought with and then shot Travyon Martin inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida. In a recorded call, GZ told Sanford police that he’d spotted an unknown male “just walking around [and looking at homes]…this guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something.” Soon after he said the following: “These assholes, they always get away.”

“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...