Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) wins the heavyweight title belt early on in Creed II, which opens today in theaters across the country. But for much of the movie, the guy doesn’t feel like much of a champion. He feels beaten, humiliated and scared. And a fight against Viktor Drago—a mountain of a man (and the son of Ivan Drago, the boxer who killed Adonis’ father) looms. Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Adonis’ trainer, knows the fight will be the biggest... Read more
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald opens, appropriately enough, with a gathering storm. Silver-tongued villain Gellert Grindelwald, tossed in prison in the last Fantastic Beasts film, makes a spectacular break for freedom in the movie’s first moments, conjuring a storm to aid his escape. Setting up a home base in early 20th-century Paris and driven by the idea of a magic-dominated world in which non-magical muggles are (in Grindelwald’s own words) simply “beasts of burden,” the wizard rallies his supporters... Read more
Comic-book legend Stan Lee died today at the age of 95. While most of us are probably most familiar with him from his delightful cameos in the Marvel movies, he was way more than a funny face. Lee didn’t single-handedly build Marvel into the multimedia behemoth it is today. But he, with the help of some talented collaborators, was its prime architect. Lee and Jack Kirby created the X-Men, Fantastic Four and a good chunk of who make up the... Read more
We live in some crazy times. In the United States, we may be as divided as I can ever remember, and no division seems perhaps as stringent as the divide today between science and faith. But it wasn’t always so. “There was a time in the mid-1800s, the great revival movement and so on, when there was no difference between being religious and being scientific,” says documentary director David Conover. “They were very much drawing on the same thing. …... Read more
“I need to find a way to fill this big, black hole in me.” Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalamet) says this in Beautiful Boy, speaking in a meeting to family, friends and fellow addicts. He’s talking about his own addictions, especially to crystal meth. “I felt complete,” he says of the aftermath of taking the drug. “I’ve been chasing that high ever since.” He talks about how grateful he is to be off the drug now, how much his parents and... Read more
Michael Myers is a big jerk. We’ve known that for a while, of course. The Halloween franchise’s big, bad boogeyman has been terrorizing the teens of Haddonfield, Illinois, for 40 years now. And while the latest sequel (out this very day) conveniently ignores every Halloween film but the 1978 original, Michael’s personal kill count still easily climbs into the double digits. Yes, Michael Myers is indeed a terrible human being. Or is he? Might he be … something else? After... Read more
As Halloween tears into theaters this weekend, you might want to keep an eye out for a smaller, lighter option. It’s called Change in the Air and, appropriately, it’s a nice change of pace from the season’s gore-filled horror flicks and heavy Oscar contenders. It’s a light, dreamy story about a quiet neighborhood upended by a mysterious newcomer (played by The Marvelous Ms. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan). It’s about the corrosive nature of secrets, the healing power of community and is... Read more
The real Neil Armstrong didn’t like to be pinned down, on earth or in heaven. First Man depicts the astronaut as an incredibly private man, and indeed he was. Both political parties wooed the American hero, but Armstrong refused to get into politics. He didn’t talk much about himself—even, as the Associated Press notes (and the movie illustrates), to his family. The movie makes only the smallest of nods toward faith (his daughter is buried in a Christian funeral), and... Read more
I watched New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees break one of the National Football League’s most hallowed records last night—one held by one of my favorite players, Peyton Manning. After all, Manning set the mark as a member of the Denver Broncos, my lifelong favorite team. And in a year like this is shaping out to be (the Broncos are 2-3 and just lost a game to the lowly New York Jets), we Broncos fans need all the records and... Read more
Is the new movie Venom silly? Yep. Dumb? Sure. No one’s going to walk into Sony’s new superhero movie expecting a thoughtful study on, I dunno, environmental nihilism. It’s a weird mashup of The Exorcist and 48 Hours abducted by its own CGI. But hey, even light, silly, dumb movies can have something to say. And Venom has something to say about science—particularly science divorced from a higher morality. Moviemakers have long been suspicious of science and technology unfettered by... Read more
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