The Goods: Film ReviewsIt’s amazing how things just work better when you cast Hanks as your lead. He grounds and brings depth to this period drama whose premise isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Greengrass is doing good work in keeping the tone gritty and visceral but never exploitative even at its most nihilistic (and, yeah, it goes dark a couple of times).
Oscar-bait dad movie, but the best kind: made by Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, both of whom do excellent work. The narrative has a slightly awkward shift in the middle, and Kaminsky’s photography is classical, though dotted with his signature strong-extant-lights (e.g. lamps/windows) almost to the point of shtick, but it’s a really satisfying story of the fine line between duty to country and duty to mankind.
Transcendent cinema: Huge and filled with spectacle and heart. Colorful, splashy, plenty campy. The Wachowskis + Tom Tykwer do not skimp on the aggressive flavor of any of the sections, so it avoids the half-assed feeling of many anthology films, though Cloud Atlas doesn’t feel like an anthology at all thanks to its intercutting between segments and its rapturous, symphonic conclusion. It’s a film that asserts that brave acts of love and kindness can reverberate through time and space. And it makes you believe it.
Far too much of a biopic cliche and a corporate pat on the back to be truly great, but also much better than the worst version of this could have been. It helps tremendously to have Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks as leads.
There’s really only about 40 minutes of worthy material here, the detailed reconstruction of the fateful plane almost-crash. But those 40 minutes are really damn good, so I don’t mind forgiving all the padding, which not even Tom Hanks can elevate.
A lovely, bespoke little drama that uses the Mister Rogers and his show as a vessel to convey how hard it is to be a good person. Tom Hanks can do anything.
The kind of movie I feel more obligation to like than actual enthusiasm. It’s undeniably well-made and -acted, though — the kind of prestige journalistic thriller that keeps you hooked. I think my biggest issue is that the story itself isn’t quite as rich and dangerous as the best of the genre — The Washington Post wasn’t even the paper that broke the story in question!
More like Clifford the Big Red Dud, amirite? If you’ve read the books, you know Clifford is supposed to be a ungodly force of nature, not a big cuddly CGI fella. There are some weird themes in this movie, like a biotech CEO who wants to use Clifford’s genetic mutations on humans (or something), and the author, Norman Bridwell, as a possibly-immortal in-universe character, that add a fun sense of strangeness to keep it from being too dull.
Thoroughly entertaining family sports flick that holds up well. Good flavor, fun script, nice execution of the tropes.
What makes Blues Brothers work is that its mantra “we’re on a mission from God” is not an ironic eye-roll but a genuine mission statement. John Landis and Dan Aykroyd understand that this material only works if the film can communicate the deep awe and worship of the music that inspired it. That’s what makes this, in spite of its draggy runtime and shaggy comedy, a Great Film.