Review: Captain Fantastic

Here's Murtada with thoughts on an essential hero for these particular times, Viggo Mortensen as Captain Fantasic  (opening this weekend).

Captain Fantastic opens by immediately throwing the viewer into its physical world. Forests, mountains, people hunting and gathering. If I didn’t know the synopsis beforehand I’d have thought I was watching a update of Lord of the Flies. Instead the film is about a fiercely independent patriarch (Viggo Mortensen) raising his six children in forests of the Pacific Northwest, teaching them how to thrive while turning his back on a conventional contemporary life and what it means and may offer.

This particular fantasy felt extremely appealing in a post-Brexit, Trump world...

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Review: The BFG

Eric here, with thoughts on the new Steven Spielberg release, The BFG.   

Spielberg lends his patented magical touch to this film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s story The BFG.  It’s the tale of little orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), who meets a friendly elderly giant (Mark Rylance) who instills dreams into children.  They go off together to Giant Country, where we meet other giants who eat children, and Dream Country, where The BFG shows her how he harvests dreams.  Then they enroll the Queen of England in an attack on the bad giants.

The first third of the picture establishes the meet-cute of our two leads, and it’s standard fantasy fare, albeit with a sleek look that blends the live action and CGI material quite successfully into one neat universe.  It’s all a little sparkly and cute, and pitched as most kids’ movies are to generate response for twinkly endearment.  At the end of this act, when we meet the bad giants, the film gets its first jolt of real gas... 

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Doc Corner: Norman Lear's Golden Age of TV

Glenn here with our weekly look at documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand.

We get told time and time again that we are in a golden age of television, and it’s impossible to deny that the expansion of the viewing landscape has resulted in a boon of creativity that can be seen in every single corner of the television globe. There are times throughout the brisk Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You where it appears directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are attempting to suggest that this golden age was birthed some 40-odd years ago when Norman Lear was the centre of the small screen universe with a collection of series to his name that not only snagged record-busting ratings, but also critical acclaim and pop culture buzz that saw his shows watched by some 120 million American a week.

You could say he was like David E. Kelley and Shonda Rhimes of his day.

While guest appearances by the likes of Amy Poehler, Jon Stewart and even George Clooney highlight his influence both creatively and politically, Ewing and Grady’s film is far too concerned with the man himself to truly dive into the reverberations of his work on modern television...

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Review: The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Editor's Note: This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. Our "Swing Tarzan Swing" column, investigating the shifting portrayals and quality of Tarzan films over pop culture history will resume next weekend. We'll circle back to Skarsgård at the end.

You know that antipiracy text that sometimes appears on movie screens now post-credits? "The making and legal distribution of this film supported over X-many thousands of jobs." This message kept bothering me the day after seeing The Legend of Tarzan (2016). Yes, piracy is bad but you know what else is terrible? That none of those jobs were for animal trainers! I swear that not a single real animal appears in the new film, which has to be a first for a Tarzan film. And hopefully a last. It's all computer generated imagery for this jungle adventure...

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Review: The Neon Demon

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

What are we looking at? 

The Neon Demon‘s first tableau features Elle Fanning, throat slit and reclining on a chaise lounge floating over a pool of photogenic crimson blood. It’s so perfectly lit and shaped it begs to be honored as a metaphoric pedestal exalting her death. Is the obviously smitten man photographing all of this her serial killer who missed his calling as an art director?

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