dvd of the week You could call Swiss Army Man a cross between Weekend at Bernie’s and Castaway. It’s as bizarre and puerile as Bernie’s and aspires to Castaway’s depth; Swiss Army Man uses the insanity of its premise to create a powerfully symbolic fever dream about the power of friendship to heal the wounds…
dvd of the week Orry-Kelly won three Oscars for costume design, including for Some Like It Hot and An American In Paris. He designed the costumes for Auntie Mame, Casablanca, 42 Street and several of Bette Davis’ most iconic roles: Jezibel, Dark Victor, and The Letter. This career makes him important, but he was also…
dvd of the week Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are as great a comedy team as any, and whether on Saturday Night Live, hosting the Golden Globes, or in the silly Baby Mama (2008), their easy connection and thrilling repartee is pure joy to watch. In Sisters, they again play opposites, though in a switch,…
dvd of the week Ryan Coogler’s Rocky sequel-cum-reboot turns Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) into the trainer and Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son Donny (Michael P. Jordan) into the boxer with something to prove. The plot is a by-the-numbers boxing movie, but Stallone’s seventh turn as Rocky Balboa is arguably his best, and Michael P. Jordan is again…
dvd of the week Surprising to many, Ant-Man, the movie about one of the Marvel Universe’s more minor characters that went through a tortured development, turned out to be a damn fine film, much more enjoyable and coherent than the massively hyped Avengers: Age of Ultron. Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a thief with a…
dvd of the week Tangerine, a masterpiece of LGBT cinema, is about one day in the lives of two transgender prostitutes in Hollywood. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are about to share a celebratory donut – it’s Christmas Eve, and Sin-Dee has just gotten out of jail – when Alexandra accidentally blurts…
dvd of the week The sequel to Magic Mike, the movie about the surprisingly smart male stripper with a heart of gold, is as star and writer Channing Tatum promised, more what people expected from the original film. It’s not remotely dark, and there’s a lot more dancing, and that dancing is all about hot…
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…
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 More divisive than any of Christopher Nolan’s films, Interstellar is a long, slow, brainy and, to me, enthralling and thrilling science fiction epic. In the near future, Earth is becoming inhospitable to life and a now-secret NASA is sending ships to parts of the galaxy to find a new home for…
