A Big Bold Beautiful Journey — which sounds like a Boy Scout jamboree presided over by Donald Trump — is a very traditional movie masquerading as a very odd movie. What helps make it a good movie is how well it (mostly) maintains a balance between tradition and oddity.
For all that “Eddington” variously concerns itself with politics and conspiracy theories and violence and the Western landscape, what it’s really about is social media.
It's a morality play, full of hopeless tosh. Still, Hitchcock manages to include a hallucination sequence and a highly suggestive spurt from a soda siphon. [12 Jan 2020]
Listening to Taylor is so compelling the screen could be blank and “Lost Tapes” would still be interesting. But director Nanette Burstein keeps things visually abundant with home movies, snapshots, film stills, film clips, newsreels, publicity photos.
It’s not that any of the actors are bad. Zendaya has a screen authority that goes way beyond that imperious look. It’s just that none of them is especially compelling.
Civil War can, and frequently does, put its characters through an emotional wringer. It puts viewers through one, too. But those characters seem less like people with actual feelings to be wrung than means to Garland’s filmmaking ends.
The Beast is an unusual film: challenging, ambitious, and inward. Even when inscrutable, as it often is, it holds the attention, though less so the longer it lasts, and it lasts nearly 2½ hours.
