Clint is "The Mule"

Please welcome guest contributor Abe Fried-Tanzer from Movies with Abe. Since we hadn't discussed Clint Eastwood's new movie, he's doing the honor...

This is not the first time that Clint Eastwood has released a film at the tail end of awards season. That strategy worked wonders in 2014 for American Sniper, which landed major Oscar nominations despite missing out on a number of precursors. A full decade earlier, Million Dollar Baby launched late and managed to overtake the Oscar frontrunner, The Aviator, to win Best Picture. Eastwood may have arrived too late to earn accolades for this effort, which marks his 37th film as director, but he’s sure to earn some fans for his performance.

The most comparable frame of reference for The Mule is the most recent film that saw Eastwood as an acting Oscar hopeful, 2008’s Gran Torino... 

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Review: "Bird Box" on Netflix

by Eric Blume

The new limited-theatrical-release / now-on-Netflix movie Bird Box is a puzzlement. It’s a post-apocalypse thriller directed by Oscar and Emmy-winner Susanne Bier, and stars Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Jackie Weaver, and Trevante Rhodes as survivors of a world-ending crisis.  A lot of talented people are involved in this film, so it’s a true curiosity that the whole thing ends up a gigantic shrug.

The details of this apocalypse are a little murky, but it goes something like this. Scary creatures (which we never see) are appearing around the globe, and they tap into your deepest fears somehow(?), and cause you to immediately commit suicide...

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Review: Aquaman

by Chris Feil

There’s an element to Aquaman’s chutzpah that feels lost to contemporary cynicism, as if its as much an artifact as the trident our titular hero chases. Here is a superhero epic that skews closer to something like Stephen Sommers Mummy trilogy, enveloped in sincerity and willingness to dazzle without winks or too-cool posturing.

But cut that with an over-caffeinated, sugar rush aesthetic packed to (forgive me) the gills with technicolor extremity, and you get a superhero film that’s delightfully batshit. It’s both beyond absurd and the guiltiest of pleasures, like Lisa Frank for dudes or gay underwater Indiana Jones. For some it might be an acquired taste, but it succeeds by pairing simplistic narrative ambitions with an authentically wild visual experience.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Reviewed

Every Saturday this month, Tim will be taking a look at one of the films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

Fans of Marvel's iconic hero Spider-Man have had a packed 2018, between Tom Holland's third big-screen turn as the character in Avengers: Infinity War and Tom Hardy's role as the antihero Eddie Brock in the conspicuously Spider-Man-less Venom. But the best has very much been saved for last, in the form of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a new animated feature that's easily the best Spider-Man movie since Spider-Man 2 (2004) back in the distant early days of the modern superhero movie boom.

The film is the first big-screen adventure of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), who first appeared in comic books in 2011 as a new Spider-Man following the temporary death of Peter Parker. He's a Brooklyn teenager, awkwardly fitting into life at an elite boarding school, living in perpetual chagrin at the overbearing authority of his cop dad (Brian Tyree Henry), and expressing himself through graffiti art (one of the things his dad is specifically overbearing about). And if that was all he ever was or did, Into the Spider-Verse would still put up a good argument for itself as a more than worthy movie...

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Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

by Murtada Elfadl

If Beale Street Could Talk starts with Fonny (Stephan James) asking his girlfriend Tish (Kiki Layne) “Are you ready for this?” I have been ready for a James Baldwin film adaptation for many years. Since I read "Giovanni’s Room" as a young teen and my mind was opened to queer stories. Since I was given "The Fire Next Time" to read as I made the decision to immigrate to the United States, so that I know what I was getting myself into. "Another Country" remains my favorite novel of all time. I am biased for Baldwin, for his writing, for his ideas, for his power, so I was excited for this film. I was also afraid. Will Barry Jenkins be able to interpret Baldwin’s howls of anger and despair as loud as I heard them reading Baldwin’s prose? I needn’t have worried.

Set in early-1970s Harlem, Beale Street is about how Fonny and Tish are separated when he’s arrested for a rape that he did not commit...

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