Dir. Rupert Wyatt. Starring Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow What makes Rise of the Planet of the Apes really different from other serious blockbuster movies of its time is its conscience. Like the original Planet of the Apes, which guesses that a nuclear holocaust would obliterate humanity, Rise of the Planet of the Apes… Read More Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Dir. Damien Chazelle. Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend Early in the film, Mia (Stone) has a pretty bad day. She gets cut off by a guy in an old car while she’s practicing a monologue she’s going to audition with. She’s late for the audition itself, has to rush out of her coffee… Read More La La Land (2016)
Dir. Morten Tyldum. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Allen Leech The Imitation Game is structurally deficient. By virtually any standard it’s got all of the best elements of a good biopic: a well-known (but not too well-known) historical figure with some relevance to even casual viewers, a story which relates back to an important historical… Read More The Imitation Game (2014)
Dir. Dan Gilroy. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is an enterprising American entrepreneur. Almost entirely self-trained, with the help of some business classes from the Internet, he represents the “school of hard knocks” approach to building a company. Through a combination of dogged persistence, on-scene training, hard work, and a… Read More Nightcrawler (2014)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker Amy Adams’ star image is like a braid. One strand is defined by Enchanted, but also includes Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Junebug, Catch Me if You Can, Julie and Julia, and The Muppets. Adams is, for my money, the most beautiful redheaded actress… Read More Arrival (2016)
Dir. John Crowley. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Jane Brennan Saoirse Ronan, the Girl with the Huge Pupils, is costumed beautifully by Odile Dicks-Mireaux in this film. Ronan wears rich orangey-browns and cool blue-greens in the beginning, but by the end seems at home in bright yellow and pink; in one scene, she wears an… Read More Brooklyn (2015)
Today, on this one-year anniversary of Grantland’s demise, Matt and I take to the podcast to discuss what we loved about the site, what we wished had been better, and what we hope to see from its sequel site, The Ringer. In a time when it’s as hard as it ever was to pay people… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 27: Halloween in Cambodia
The airing of the Hamildoc on PBS (which is only available until mid-November! If you haven’t watched it, hurry!) a few nights ago was received with the kind of joy which you’d expect. I was a little surprised at how much it aligned with the Hamiltome, and I was more than a little surprised at… Read More Race, Slavery, and Colonial Era Musicals
Dir. Byron Howard and Rich Moore. Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Jenny Slate Zootopia is built on sight gags, one of those rare gifts to animated film that just work better there than in real life. Judy Hopps (Goodwin), who is incredibly small compared to the other animals in Zootopia, chases a thief into a… Read More Zootopia (2016)
It’s so exciting for me to have to say: Spoilers! I never talk about recent things! I’ve always been leery of reviewing plays, especially plays I’ve never seen. But most plays don’t have their scripts published at midnight, either, and most plays don’t have “Harry Potter” in the name. Like Hamilton, which has a cultural… Read More Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Seeing Things Secondhand 