Review: Booksmart

by Chris Feil

Booksmart feels like a gift from the comedy gods - it’s firmly built in the teen buddy comedy traditions yet with its own unique diversions, representationally rewarding without the condescension of pandering, and a gaspingly funny look at female friendship that is also authentically moving. An impressive first feature from actress Olivia Wilde, Booksmart is joyous and it is here to fucking own the summer movie season.

Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein star as Amy and Molly, two best friends who prioritized their studies all throughout high school in the hopes of landing in the elite colleges of their dreams. On the eve of graduation, they shockingly discover that all the hard-partying kids also managed to nail their SATs and get accepted into top schools despite appearances. In a comically foiled and app-assisted evening, the two young women try to make up for lost time by finding a way into the most epic pre-graduation party.

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Review: John Wick 3: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

By Lynn Lee

“Guns.  Lots of guns.”

That line is only one of several of John Wick 3’s nods to its spiritual predecessor, The Matrix, albeit the most overt one.  With the right audience, it draws appreciative laughs.  It also embodies everything that’s both most effective and most lacking in Keanu Reeves’ latest blockbuster franchise.  The action pyrotechnics are dazzling, the callouts to his last blockbuster franchise amusing, but once the last gun stops firing, there’s nothing left.  Nothing to feel, think about, or care about, even as the story ends on yet another cliffhanger that practically ensures the next installment we all knew was coming and was sealed by the movie’s gargantuan opening box office haul.

It wasn’t always this way.  The first John Wick had a simplicity of premise that made for a sharp and clean, if fundamentally goofy, revenge narrative...

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Review: Pokemon Detective Pikachu

by Tony Ruggio

I was already in high school by the time Pokemon became a worldwide phenomenon, and I was in no mood for cute, cuddly anime animals at the moody age of sixteen. For this non-fan, however, Detective Pikachu is a minor delight filled with joy, heart, and giant Pokemon doing battle. It’s a big, bubbly kids movie that grows on you until the inevitably exhausting bombast of a cartoony third act...

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Review: Trial By Fire

by Chris Feil

The first sign of Trial By Fire’s problems is that its title is a pun, and I welcome any and all puns. It's perhaps not the most sensitive way to approach a film that begins with a house fire that takes the lives of multiple children. Maybe don't do that.

But then again, sensitivity isn’t the film’s strong suit. As directed by Edward Zwick (yes that Edward Zwick, primarily known for epics your dad might love like Glory and The Last Samurai), the film is a not-quite-thoughtful look at a true story of Death Row Texas. Jack O’Connell stars as Cameron Todd Willingham, a man convicted of a home arson that took the lives of his three children despite his claims of innocence. His case is doomed by prejudice and a corrupt system until he meets the correspondence of Laura Dern’s good samaritan Elizabeth Gilbert.

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Stage Door: A startling new take on "Oklahoma!"

by Deborah Lipp

Gabrielle Hamilton, nominated for a Chita Rivera award, for a very different take on the dream ballet in "Oklahoma!"

Wow, that was a lot.

Leaving the new Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, a reconceptualization of the show that pulls no punches, I felt a little staggered, like it was too soon to have a celebratory dinner afterwards. (Context: I’m assuming you know the basics of this classic of musical theater, and I won’t consider any of its points “spoilers”. I will hold back potential spoilers, though, for this version.)

Daniel Fish’s unique production changes not one word, either spoken or sung, but it all feels very new...

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