Crisp Criticism - "Assassin’s Creed", "Little Men", "Right Now, Wrong Then", "Sing"

by

Julien Faddoul

Assassin’s Creed

A movie based on a video game.

Joyless, choppily edited action film based on a product from a medium that still has yet to prove its virtue alongside cinema. Despite the prominence of those involvement, this is strictly for fans. The rest are screwed.

d – Justin Kurzel

w – Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage

ph – Adam Arkapaw

pd – Andy Nicholson

m – Jed Kurzel

ed – Christopher Tellefsen

cos – Sammy Sheldon Differ

p – Jean-Julien Baronnet, Gérard Guillemot, Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley, Michael Fassbender, Conor McCaughan, Arnon Milchan

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Ariane Labed, Callum Turner

Little Men *

A new pair of best friends – one of whom is clearly gay – have their bond tested by their parents' battle over a dress shop lease.

Typical of Sachs, mood and setting are deftly sculpted. But his plot this time is thin and unsatisfactory, and completely misguided in its choice of which characters to paint as victims and which to paint as villains.

d – Ira Sachs

w – Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias

ph – Óscar Durán

pd – Alexandra Schaller

m – Dickon Hinchliffe

ed – Mollie Goldstein, Affonso Gonçalves

cos – Eden Miller

p – Lucas Joaquin, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Jim Lande, Ira Sachs

Cast: Greg Kinnear, Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri, Paulina García, Jennifer Ehle, Alfred Molina

Right Now, Wrong Then **

A film director falls for a young painter. And then, again.

Hong seems to poke fun at his skeptics here, offering two versions of the same conversation piece but denying the audience any respecting discourse. As familiar as it is, it contains some of his most elegiac passages.

wd – Hong Sang-soo

ph – Park Hong-yeol

m – Jeong Yong-jin

ed – Hahm Sung-won

p – Kim Kyoung-hee

Cast: Jung Jae-young, Kim Min-hee

Sing

In a city of humanoid animals, a hustling theater impresario's attempt to save his theater with a singing competition becomes grander than he anticipates.

A cynical film devoid of purpose. What it really comes down to here is a lack of trust; trust in the attention spans of children, trust in the captious capabilities of adults and trust in its own self worth that maybe CG animal characters singing karaoke for 2 hours might have been about something more.

wd – Garth Jennings

co-d – Christophe Lourdelet

pd – Eric Guillon

m – Joby Talbot

ed – Gregory Perler

p – Christopher Meledandri, Janet Healy

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Scarlett Johansson, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Nick Offerman, Peter Serafinowicz, Jennifer Saunders, Nick Kroll, Leslie Jones, Beck Bennett