Happily, the narrative moves ahead quickly, the better to demonstrate new, inventive methods of reducing murder-happy billionaires to sloppy carcasses in between beats where Weaving and Newton get to play off of one another.
While the plot isn’t realistic, it’s deeply felt, which is what these kinds of melodramas are supposed to offer. It’s a leaps and bounds improvement over Regretting You, and though Reminders Of Him has fewer grace notes than It Ends With Us, it’s got a more cohesive, meaningful message.
Over two-and-a-half hours, the duo’s film gazes in wonder at alien engineering, opens its heart to human vulnerability through karaoke, and makes the case that inspiring the next generation (or at least perpetuating its existence) is alluring enough to shake the smarmiest manchildren from their self-imposed exile. Most effectively, though, Project Hail Mary sees a personal sense of humor shine through the bludgeoning grandeur of a AAA sci-fi.
As a theatrical experience, it’s lots of fun, making clever use of proven techniques that build tension before releasing it with exploding light bulbs and ghostly figures appearing in the corner of the frame.
It’s both more and less than “Taken: Mom Edition,” another boneheaded poking of conservative’s self-inflicted wounds around human trafficking with a title just as deluded as its content.
Forget the gritty realism and quippy one-liners that so often define the modern action genre, War Machine is proudly, almost guilelessly old-fashioned.
On the whole, Man on the Run is a visually and technically creative documentary that successfully contextualizes McCartney’s decade of metamorphosis as a person and musician via his second band, Wings.
The Immortal Man is not a good entry point into Peaky Blinders for the same reason it is not rewarding for existing fans: It traffics only in the late stages of Shelby’s arc, but offers nothing new to those who have already been there, done that.
Gyllenhaal never tones down the brutality, ripping us through bloody tongues, heads, and bodies—in cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fit of gorgeously captured violence—until the frenzied finish
