Moonlight is a beautiful movie with some pacing oddities. Over the course of three titled chapters, it shows the journey to manhood of Chiron, a gay black man who lives in an impoverished neighborhood plagued by drugs. Masculinity – or the semblance thereof – is the main theme here.… Read the rest
On the surface, the story of Lion sounds like fodder for a Lifetime movie or an emotionally manipulative reality tv program. But it is so exceptionally well-told that you may find yourself shedding a silent manly tear or two by the end, even if you were all set to scoff at the obvious sentimentality of it all.… Read the rest
J.K. Rowling herself wrote the script for this, the first of supposedly five new movies taking place in the Harry Potter ‘verse. It is a spin-off prequel, using a book mentioned in the original movies – and in the books, of course – as the hook.… Read the rest
Overly convoluted family relations tied up in intergalactic conflict? Must be a Star Wars movie. Rogue One takes place right before A New Hope and after the dreary prequels, making it Star Wars 3.5 I guess. The film was spun off from a single line in A New Hope and gives a context to it.… Read the rest
The trailer for Arrival – a film not to be confused with the Charlie Sheen aliens-are-coming vehicle The Arrival (1996) – shows it to be suspenseful and action-packed. While it is the former, it is not the latter. It is something way more interesting than a generic alien invasion movie.… Read the rest
The Girl on the Train is a thriller about a small group of dyfunctional people. When one of them goes missing, the question is – wha’ happa? The problem is that the culprit and the motive are easy to guess before the movie reveals them.… Read the rest
If you imagine a cross between Harry Potter and the X-Men, as directed by Tim Burton, you will have a fair idea of what to expect from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The film is based on the first of a series of young adult novels.… Read the rest
T
he witch is back, baby! Which witch? Well, the one from Blair. You may remember her from the low-budget horror hit The Blair Witch Project from 1999, although you never actually saw her on-screen. Her name is also tied to an unremarkable sequel that appeared a year later (Book of Shadows).… Read the rest
Once upon a time, a group of four bearded gay men – me included – went to a matinee to watch Bridget Jones’s Baby. And they all jolly well enjoyed it. You don’t have to be a chick to enjoy this flick as it turns out, though I imagine that it helps.… Read the rest
Jason Bourne is a dumb movie about allegedly smart people. Evil dudes inside the CIA – primarily its Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) – start the hunt for former operative Bourne again, leading to various chase sequences. I saw the previous films in the franchise, but remember very little about them, and they were filed in my memory only as generic action movies.… Read the rest
