Occasionally, I feel guilty about disliking a movie. Everyone else loves this. And on its surface, it seems exactly like a movie I would love myself. Every frame of the film is gorgeous. It’s got great music. It’s a movie about spies. Many of the performances are top-notch — Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, and Tom Burke are all fantastic. And most of all, it’s got that Soderbergh Ocean’s Eleven effortless cool oozing from every pore.
And I didn’t care…
The first, and still one of the very best, of the MCU. Marvel hit the jackpot by casting Robert Downey Jr., still in the process of rebuilding his career at the time, for the title role. He completely nails the part of the lovable jerk playboy, pulling off every aspect of the role — the physicality, the drama, and the comedy — like no one else could have.
For me, comic book movies are at their strongest when they (a)…
Bong Joon Ho’s latest is an imaginative and funny sci-fi satire that, sadly, loses its focus and degenerates into Avatar by the end. Even though the whole second half is a mess narratively and thematically, the movie is still worth seeing for its striking visuals, its humor, and its bonkers performances.
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A movie about a real-life German pastor who stood up to Hitler and became a spy and an assassin? Yes! Sign me up!
And then I see the movie. What a letdown. There’s a great but brief section early on where the title character spends time in Harlem and gets hooked on jazz, but things go downhill after that. The movie moves from one episode in his life to another, telling each in an abbreviated and not terribly satisfying fashion.…
