Review: The Current War (Director's Cut)

by Tony Ruggio

After more than a year of pre-release hell at the scissorhands of Harvey Weinstein and his terrible deeds, The Current War has finally seen the light of day. Tackling the industrial war over electricity between famed inventor Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and business magnate George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), it’s a good story well told. Well, after a rough first half, anyway. The epic narrative is rushed and contracted in the early going, before evening out and focusing more on character in the final stretch.

The breakneck pacing actually does the film a disservice, as we barely get to spend time with Edison, Westinghouse, or their creations before director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon barrels forward to the next moment in history. Classical themes of greed, power, and loss are threaded like any other biopic of powerful men, but the greatest subtext lays therein, where the two men differed so greatly...

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Review: The Laundromat is an entertaining swing and miss.

by Tony Ruggio

Steven Soderbergh's fingerprints are unmistakable and unknowable simultaneously. He bounds from genre to genre, and studio to indie and back again with such regularity that he’s difficult to pin down. The only thing you can count on is that he’ll try new things and, unless he’s indulging in Ocean’s Eleven fun, and attempt to push the boundaries of what we know as cinema. That all sounds like embellishment and it is, because Soderbergh is nothing if not a bit pretentious. His newest film, The Laundromat, is a big swing aimed at uncovering the morbid, funny, and messed-up nature of the scheming that went on behind the Panama Papers scandal. He misses the mark by half an hour. It’s The Big Short if The Big Short was in a hurry to fill you in on the minutiae, or didn’t bother to impart to you the gravity of its subject matter.

The film is only ninety or so minutes long and for a topic as heady as financial con-artists around the world, and the all-seeing, all-ignoring facilitators who allowed for them, well, the world is not enough...

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Zombieland: Double Tap

by Michael Frank

Zombieland: Double Tap doesn’t waste time telling you that you’re watching a zombie movie. The Columbia Pictures logo comes to life, fighting off multiple would-be enemies, leading to a Deadpool-esque opening credits sequence. It’s not new by any means, but it reminds you why you like zombie movies in the first place: they’re fun as hell. 

The rest of the film follows its opening: an enjoyable movie-going experience with a lack of plot, a lack of originality, yet just enough movie stars, inside jokes, and heart to make it worthwhile. Double Tap follows our leads from a decade earlier, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), as they traverse the new-look world that’s still full of zombies. The actors themselves have aged nicely as well, with Harrelson, Eisenberg, Stone, and Breslin all maintaining prolific and award-winning careers. If anything, they’re more likeable than they were 10 years ago, an difficult feat for a cast to pull off. They bring their full arsenal of charisma to their roles in Double Tap, giving generous performances to a film that cares more about its world than its characters...

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Review: "Cyrano, My Love" & "By the Grace of God"

by Cláudio Alves

Pity those who live in the shadow of Oscar's champions. Such is the case of two French films from last year which now arrive in American theatres. If they were Hollywood productions, we'd surely be talking about Cyrano, My Love and By the Grace of God as potential contenders. As it stands, they can expect some golden recognition in the shape of the César rather than a little golden man. They must also expect eternal comparisons to more famous movies... 

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Review: Gemini Man

by Tony Ruggio

We live in a polarizing world, a place of right or left, love or hate. In the age of the internet, if you want to be noticed, if you want to be included, not ignored, you take a side. No one wants to wail about both the good and the bad and find themselves alone on an island. They want to see the good or see the bad and say to everyone "god is good" or "god is awful." 

I don't believe in astrology or zodiac signs but Geminis supposedly have dual personalities, an ability to harbor two different points of view simultaneously. Coincidence or not, I'm a Gemini. I find myself witnessing most debates from the middle of love and hate, from geopolitical quagmires to frivolous media circuses to the movies.

Film criticism often succumbs to group-think, and the need to deify or decry a particular movie. Following in the footsteps of Joker, Gemini Man is the latest victim of such...

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