[8] Chris Pine stars in this emotional rescue story about a heroic Coast Guardsman who leads a small crew into a winter storm to rescue the workers on a sinking oil tanker. The Finest Hours is based on the true 1952 story, which the Coast Guard still regards as their most miraculous mission. The movie may already sound exciting to you — and it is. But …
[7] Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell headline this true story about the largest oil drilling disaster in American history. Deepwater Horizon is essentially a disaster movie in the grand tradition of that subgenre, but director Peter Berg is sensitive to the fact that 11 men lost their lives in the 2010 tragedy and that crude oil flooded the Gulf of Mexico as a result. BP Oil …
[4] The old fraternity house next door to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne has moved away… but now there’s a sorority there — and the girls are even worse than the boys were. Rogen and Byrne seek out their old fraternity nemesis, Zac Efron, to help them banish the boozie babes. I enjoyed the first Neighbors because it gave Rogen, Byrne, Dave Franco, and surprisingly, Efron, …
[5] A strict vegetarian (Garance Marillier) attends a veterinary school where bizarre student hazing creates a craving for hunger that can’t be satiated. Raw may sound like a gory horror film, but it really isn’t that sort of movie. It plays out more like a Twilight Zone episode, complete with a cute explanatory epilogue. It takes a long time for the main character to discover her cannibalistic desires. …
[4] Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine all return for another game of magicians playing cat and mouse. (Isla Fisher is noticeably replaced with a new character played by Lizzy Caplan.) I enjoyed the first Now You See Me, and I like the entire cast for both movies. But sometimes that’s just not enough. The sequel tries to add …
[3] And if you look out your window at the Isle of Misfit Movies, you might catch a glimpse of The Boss, an alleged comedy from 2016 starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, and Peter Dinklage. McCarthy stars as a crude version of Martha Stewart, a ‘better living guru’ who gets tossed in the slammer for insider trading. When she gets out of the big top, …
[7] Tom Ford (A Single Man) adapts Austin Wright’s novel to the screen, casting Amy Adams as a gallery manager whose writer ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) pops out of the blue twenty years after she left him to present her with a new manuscript. The film goes back and forth between recreating scenes from the manuscript, a violent piece titled Nocturnal Animals, and Adams’ character’s present life. As …
[9] Not since 1980’s Ordinary People have we had such a genuinely affecting movie about loss and mourning. In Manchester by the Sea, a man with a tortured past discovers he is the legal guardian of his late brother’s teenaged son. Casey Affleck is remarkable and nuanced in the lead role, playing a character who has repressed his feelings for so long that the mere …
[4] Rogue One is the first of what is sure to be many stand-alone or spin-off Star Wars movies over the next few decades. This maiden venture focuses on the events leading directly into Episode IV: A New Hope, with a young woman trying to redeem her father’s coerced invention of the Death Star by leading a rag-tag team of freedom fighters into hostile Imperial …
[7] J.K. Rowling takes a more firm hand with her franchise moving forward, both screenwriting and co-producing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The new movie takes place 70 years before the events of the other Harry Potter movies, centering around an odd-ball magician named Newt Scamander (Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne) and his misadventures in New York City, where several mischievous and magical creature …
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