Captain America: Civil War (2016/US)

by

Julien Faddoul

* (1 star)

d – Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

w – Christopher Markus Stephen McFeely   (Based on the Characters by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby)

ph – Trent Opaloch

pd – Owen Paterson

m – Henry Jackman

ed – Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt

cos – Judianna Makovsky

p – Kevin Feige

Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Chadwick Boseman, Tom Holland, Daniel Brühl, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, Emily VanCamp, Martin Freeman, Marisa Tomei, John Kani, John Slattery, Alfre Woodard, Stan Lee, Hope Davis, Kerry Condon, Jim Rash, Ray Sahetapy, Gene Farber, Florence Kasumba, Amelia Morck, Julianna Guill

Marvel movies at this point feel like a collection of Christmas tree ornaments. Lamentably, it’s not the feeling when you gaze at a deftly decorated tree but rather when you first open the dusty box after 11 months of storage. A box full of old stuff that you kind of remember from last year and now it’s your job to make something stimulating out of them.

Crisp Criticism - "The Boss", "Mother's Day", "The Divergent Series: Allegiant: Part 1", "Eddie the Eagle"

by

Julien Faddoul

The Boss

A titan of industry is sent to prison after she's caught insider trading. When she emerges, she attempts to rebrand herself as America's latest sweetheart.

Dim, illogical comedy that devotes all its time to jokes that are either inconsistent or contradictory. Another failure by its star to combine the temperaments of sadness and slapstick.

d – Ben Falcone

w – Ben Falcone, Steve Mallory, Melissa McCarthy

ph – Julio Macat

pd – Rusty Smith

m – Christopher Lennertz

ed – Craig Alpert

cos – Wendy Chuck

p – Will Ferrell, Adam McKay

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Peter Dinklage, Kristen Bell, Kathy Bates, Kristen Schaal, Cecily Strong, Margo Martindale, Tyler Labine, Parker Young

The Jungle Book (2016/US)

by

Julien Faddoul

** (2 stars)

d – Jon Favreau

w – Justin Marks   (Based on the Book by Rudyard Kipling)

ph – Bill Pope

pd – Christopher Glass, Abhijeet Mazumder 

m – John Debney

ed – Mark Livolsi

cos – Laura Jean Shannon

p – Brigham Taylor, Jon Favreau

Cast: Neel Sethi, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Walken, Bill Murray, Giancarlo Esposito, Garry Shandling

Someone close to me recently was relaying how devastated he felt at the beginning of Tarzan (1999) when Kala the Gorilla’s baby was eaten to death by the leopard Sabor. He said “You feel so bad that this woman lost her child”, at which point I corrected him and said “You mean gorilla, right?” The art of animated anthropomorphization is, when done well, utterly astounding and although my friend may have just made a mental slip, it is, I think, a rather telling one.

Crisp Criticism - "Kung Fu Panda 3", "The Huntsman: Winter’s War", "Eye in the Sky"

by

Julien Faddoul

Kung Fu Panda 3 **

Continuing his Kung Fu journey, Po must face two threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home.

Clearly the weakest of the series so far: Its adherence to mainstream comedy over intricate mythology disappoints after the elegance of the first two films. This is no doubt the result of the studio's recent corporate restructure. And the plot's awkward movement is also frustrating coming from this specific crew. But the action scenes are just too fun and the animation (much of which is hand-drawn) is just too gorgeous.

d – Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Alessandro Carloni

w – Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger

pd – Raymond Zibach

m – Hans Zimmer

ed – Clare Knight

p – Melissa Cobb

Cast: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Bryan Cranston, JK Simmons, James Hong, Kate Hudson, Randall Duk Kim

Crisp Criticism - "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice", "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2", "A Bigger Splash"

by

Julien Faddoul

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Fearing that the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the Man of Steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs.

Another gargantuan comic book film clearly lost in the wilderness of its own making: It lurches from one dull scene to another without any sense of pace or tone, being all too concerned with setting up succeeding films that don’t exist yet.

d – Zack Snyder

w – Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer   (Based on the Characters Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster)

ph – Larry Fong

pd – Patrick Tatopoulos

m – Junkie XL, Hans Zimmer

ed – David Brenner

cos – Michael Wilkinson

p – Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot, Scoot McNairy, Callan Mulvey, Tao Okamoto, Brandon Spink, Lauren Cohan, Michael Shannon, Michael Cassidy, Rebecca Buller, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Tj Norris, Harry Lennix, Christina Wren, Vikram Gandhi, Andrew Sullivan

The Witch (2016/US/UK/Canada/Brazil)

by

Julien Faddoul

*** (3 stars)

wd – Robert Eggers

ph – Jarin Blaschke

pd – Craig Lathrop

m – Mark Korven

ed – Louise Ford

cos – Linda Muir

p – Daniel Bekerman, Lars Knudsen, Jodi Redmond, Rodrigo Teixeira, Jay Van Hoy

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson

There’s an audacious scene in The Witch, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Best Director prize, where one of the characters, possessed by the devil, passionately and rabidly proclaims his undying and everlasting love for Christ before losing the battle with Lucifer and expiring. The reason this moment feels so bold is because one is unsure whether they should titter with amusement or cry in horror. I don’t mean to say that the scene is somehow unaware of what it is supposed to be, because that is exactly what this scene, and The Witch at large, strives to induce: a jittery state of anxiety and abstruseness.

Crisp Criticism - "Zootopia", "London Has Fallen", "Miracles from Heaven"

by

Julien Faddoul

Zootopia **

In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a rookie bunny cop and a cynical con artist fox must work together to uncover a conspiracy.

Clever anthropomorphism film from Disney that uses its immeasurable world to dichotomize current social problems, including bigotry, diversity and law corruption. But its themes only travel so far in execution, opting instead for the more traditional Disney approach of gags mixed with preachments. Though it remains, for the most, fairly absorbing.

d – Byron Howard, Rich Moore

co-d – Jared Bush

w – Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush, Jim Reardon, Josie Trinidad, Phil Johnston, Jennifer Lee

ph – Nathan Detroit Warner, Brian Leach

pd – David Goetz

m – Michael Giacchino

ed – Fabienne Rawley, Jeremy Milton

p – Clark Spencer

Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrance, Don Lake, Bonnie Hunt, JK Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Tommy Chong, Shakira

Crisp Criticism - "10 Cloverfield Lane", "Triple 9", "The Finest Hours", "Grimsby"

by

Julien Faddoul

10 Cloverfield Lane ***

Waking up from a car accident, a young woman finds herself locked and chained in the basement of a man who says he's saved her life.

A difficult film to define: Weird, taut, extremely tense 3-person play with often brilliant cinematic orchestration and performances. Its heavy reliance on contrivances in the end – and its adherence to being a “spiritual successor” to the original Cloverfield (2008) – will irk some, but as a spooky thriller it’s superb.

d – Dan Trachtenberg

w – Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, Damien Chazelle

ph – Jeff Cutter

pd – Ramsey Avery

m – Bear McCreary

ed – Stefan Grube

cos – Meagan McLaughlin

p – JJ Abrams, Lindsey Weber

Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr

Crisp Criticism - "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi", "Gods of Egypt", "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

by

Julien Faddoul

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

An American Ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.

A Bay movie stem to stern: American flags flapping in the breeze, muscly men huffing and puffing, and irresponsible amounts of Magic Hour photography that don’t make any seasonal sense. This film is obviously designed as a dog whistle for the conservative agenda in an election year, though many critics have tried to invalidate this through psychoanalytical nonsense that I remain unconvinced by. In the end, none of that is really relevant anyway. The fact that the film is a dull mess with unintelligible action interspersed with maudlin sequences of soldiers Skyping with their wife and kids is more atrocious than anything.

d – Michael Bay

w – Chuck Hogan   (Based on the Book by Mitchell Zuckoff)

ph – Dion Beebe

pd – Jeffrey Beecroft

m – Lorne Balfe

ed – Pietro Scalia, Calvin Wimmer 

cos – Deborah Lynn Scott

p – Michael Bay, Erwin Stoff

Cast: Pablo Schreiber, John Krasinski, David Denman, Toby Stephens, Max Martini, James Badge Dale, David Costabile, Elektra Anastasi, Alexia Barlier, Liisa Evastina, Dominic Fumusa, Demetrius Grosse, Steffi Thake, Kerim Troeller, Kenny Sheard

Crisp Criticism - "Hail, Caesar!", "How to Be Single", "Son of Saul"

by

Julien Faddoul

Hail, Caesar! ***

A Hollywood fixer in the 1950s works to keep the studio's stars in line.

Emblematic and hilarious comedy from its directors, once again accentuating the despairing chaos and meaninglessness of life. Recreations of the cinema of the time are flawless, mashing together musicals, westerns, film noir and even sophisticated comedies of manners. It contains in-jokes that only the extremely seasoned will recognize, witty delineations of ideological politics and one brilliant breakout performance.

wd – Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

ph – Roger Deakins

pd – Jess Gonchor

m – Carter Burwell

ed – Roderick Jaynes

cos – Mary Zophres

p – Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Alison Pill, Michael Gambon, Verónica Osorio, Emily Beecham, Heather Goldenhersh, Wayne Knight, Max Baker, Christopher Lambert, Fred Melamed, Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, Fisher Stevens, Alex Karpovsky, Clancy Brown