dvd of the week Nigel Finch’s low-budget 1995 adaptation of Martin Duberman’s novel about the Stonewall riots does not have the squeaky clean production values of Roland Emmerich’s mess, and the older film is not great. But it’s a better movie and yet it ostensibly has a similar plot. Frederick Weller is Matty, the white…
dvd and streaming Joss Whedon’s The Avengers was one of the most successful films of all time, and it was also good. For the sequel, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon has produced another greatly enjoyable piece of popcorn entertainment, one of the best episodes in the increasingly populated and complicated MCU storyline. The Avengers…
dvd of the week Sometimes, you have to do it straight. Sometimes you need to resist the temptation to change a classic. Cinderella, one of the most indelible of Western fairy tales, has been re-interpreted countless times since it first appeared in print in the 17th century, but mostly the story stays true to its…
Mad Max: Fury Road This third sequel to the post-apocalyptic classic Mad Max is the best action film in years: jaw-dropping, bold, ambitious and thrilling. At the beginning of the new film, Max (now played by Tom Hardy, replacing Mel Gibson) is again a loner on the run in the barren wasteland left by a…
dvd of the week Mark Christopher’s 54 was an infamous bomb in 1998. Miramax had hired the young gay director to craft an ensemble piece about the fabulous and scandalous 1970s New York disco Studio 54. But when they saw his very gay film, they balked, forcing him to cut the homosexual sex and trim…
dvd of the week Olivier Assayas wrote and directed this gorgeous and slyly cerebral backstage drama about aging actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) confronting her youth. In a play 20 years before, she became famous playing the ingénue who seduces an older woman, whose love and obsession drives her to suicide. Maria is asked to…
dvd of the week Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a contest to spend a week with reclusive, eccentric genius Nathan (Oscar Isaac) at his estate in a nameless, northern mountain valley. Caleb, slight and pale and stereotypically nerdy, is perhaps more ill at ease by Nathan’s masculine aggression than his genius. He seems more comfortable with…
dvd of the week Transamerica, one the best and most subversive movies about transgender issues ever made, starred Felicity Huffman as Bree in an epic performance that should have won her an Oscar in 2006. Bree is an anti-heroine – proud, angry, funny and dishonest. She is deeply flawed and secretly fragile. Without Huffman’s performance,…
dvd of the week Probably because of how great Neil Blomkamp’s first film District 9 was, critics were nasty that his third Chappie wasn’t as good. But I can’t fathom the hatred of the film, which I thoroughly enjoyed and found politically astute. Like District 9, Chappie takes place in a near-future South Africa ravaged…
dvd of the week In the stylish and slight Focus, Will Smith plays Nicky, an extremely successful and absurdly smooth conman who meets a blonde seductress named Jess (Margot Robie) when she tries to con him and fails miserably. Jess asks Nicky to teach her to be a better con artist, and while he is…
