In this witty and pithy examination of modern New York living circa 1991, director Terry Gilliam posits the absolute necessity to abandon cynicism in order to believe in something and someone. Jeff Bridges is wonderfully arrogant and nasty as stretch-limo-riding radio shock-jock, Jack, who accidentally provokes a desperate caller into entering a restaurant and slaughtering its yuppie patrons. Jack bails on his life, climbing into a bottle of whiskey and a chasm of sarcasm, self-loathing, and self-pity. Parry (another wonderfully manic Robin Williams performance), still traumatized by having seen his beloved blown away in the massacre, has gotten out of a mental institution only to become a crazed homeless person. After a chance meeting, Jack is drawn by his guilt to help Parry on a quest to steal the Holy Grail in the hope of healing both their damaged souls.
The Foreigner, a superior action-thriller from Martin Campbell, the director of two of the best Bond outings ever—Casino Royale and GoldenEye—not only delivers both excitement and dramatic complexity but offers a surprisingly moving performance from its star, Jackie Chan. Presented in a Blu-ray of impressive picture and sound quality, it makes for memorable home theater.
Two bounty hunters, a sheriff, and a prisoner walk into a haberdashery store… Such is the rambling setup of this old-dark-house-in-a-storm whodunit shaggy-dog story that writer-director Quentin Tarantino has turned into his meta-Western, The Hateful Eight. The colorful, gabby characters have been thrown together on a stagecoach heading for Red Rock, Wyoming, but are forced to take refuge from a raging blizzard in a log-cabin abode, stuck waiting it out with a rogue’s gallery of grizzled ragamuffins trustworthy as far as you can spit.
Around 1890, two lighthouse keepers—isolated on a remote New England island with just gulls, each other, and a large supply of liquor for company—begin to gradually lose their sense of reality, civility, and eventually their sanity in an atmospheric concoction not conveyed this intensely since The Shining. It all makes for a great (if grueling) two-handed drama.
In a museum of the Old West, a boy experiences an ancient noble savage figure in an exhibit coming to life and telling him about his times with the Lone Ranger. As was the case in Little Big Man, the character is an unreliable witness due to a mixture of his bullshit artistry and mental problems—and the whole incident is probably going on in the imagination of the kid, anyway. So the filmmaker has a lot of leeway for unlikely and implausible events, and he takes this artistic license to the limit.
Like Hitler, Guy Ritchie has a certain style. Which doesn’t make either of them an artist. However, Ritchie has finally learned how to make a kick-ass action movie, and in adapting a somewhat silly and camp British 1960s TV series, the director has found something that fits his talents and temperament like a tight, flash suit. By far superior to his laughably bad Sherlock Holmes films, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a slick adventure that moves along at a clip from one set piece to the next, connected by banter—not witty, but efficient in setting up each character.
In this darkly satiric thriller about conceptual dining, mockery is made both of foodies and society’s growing obsession with the dramatically experiential. A group of wealthy culinary enthusiasts, snobby gastronomes, and famous experts are whisked by yacht to a private island where an unforgettable meal awaits them at a highly exclusive gourmet restaurant.