Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)
“Some folks still wonder why you left.” 2012’s Jack Reacher may not be a very good film – in fact, I have trouble remembering even its most basic details – but it […]
Mr. Church (2016)
“There’s nothing like a really good story.” Disliking a movie is not hard work. To merely dislike a story, an individual, or a thing suggests the sort of distanced and […]
The Accountant (2016)
“Sooner or later, different scares people.” I suspect crowds will be drawn to The Accountant because they either know real accountants or bear the job title. Surely, most pilots saw Sully, soldiers went to American […]
La La Land (2016)
[This is a review from the 2016 Chicago International Film Festival. La La Land opens nationwide December 16th.] “I’m a phoenix rising from the ashes.” Perhaps the best way to describe the […]
Queen of Katwe (2016)
“In chess, the small one can become the big one.” The more I read about world affairs and watch the news and study foreign cinema, the more I discount […]
The Girl on the Train (2016)
“We were the saddest people we knew.” The abundant stories in The Girl on the Train are the products of pretty people who get bored too easily. Their lives look well-manicured, but the […]
The Birth of a Nation (2016)
“You listen to him and you might just make it into heaven.” Courage. Wisdom. Vision. These are the traits a young Nat Turner is told he possesses long before serving […]
Masterminds (2016)
“All I ever really wanted was adventure.” Masterminds approaches comedy in a grounded, hunched over position, fumbling around for a light switch in the dark and mining for a toilet seat […]
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
“This isn’t even the fun part.” Like so many YA fantasies being brought to the screen of late, Miss Peregrines’s Home for Peculiar Children has too much scope to be understood in […]
The Hollars (2016)
“Can we cut the s*** here, for a second?” People do not experience emotions the way they are portrayed and supposedly felt in The Hollars, one of the year’s biggest disappointments and […]
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