Life in the Mind of a Comatose Boy Is Gorgeous, but What Does It Reveal?

Opening your film on the image of a child plummeting off a cliff, presumably to his death, is a fairly foolproof way of getting the audience’s attention. And Alexandre Aja’s hyper-stylized coming-of-age-movie-slash-fantasy-slash-psychological-thriller The 9th Life of Louis Drax excels at grabbing you with a steady stream of provocative and ornate…

Yoga Hosers Finds Kevin Smith Barely Making a Movie

Were we wrong to root for Kevin Smith? When he burst onto the scene in 1994, it was the most improbable of rags-to-riches movie narratives: bankrolling Clerks by selling his comic book collection and running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Almost overnight, he joined the likes of…

How Dungeon Master Spencer Crittenden Became the Lord of Harmonquest

You can be forgiven for thinking that the new show from Dan Harmon, creator of Community and Rick and Morty, might come off as niche. Available on the new comedy streaming service Seeso, Harmonquest features comedians playing Pathfinder — a tabletop role-playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons — in…

Sharon Jones Won’t Let Cancer Stop the Funk

Barbara Kopple’s Miss Sharon Jones! tells the kind of true story that makes you want to kick creation itself square in the crotch. Here’s that firecracker soul singer, nearing her 60s, her boogie still majestic, her band still a tight retro marvel, her wail still the southern end of a northbound…

Paris and Limousin Are Burning in This Great Lesbian Love Story

Catherine Corsini’s lovely, sultry Summertime, a 1971-set tale about two women of different ages and class backgrounds who fall in love, celebrates erotic abandon but never loses its mind. Unlike Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013), France’s most notorious treatment of a sapphic sentimental education, Corsini’s movie, which…

Split Decision: No Champ Emerges From Boxing Biopic Hands of Stone

Robert De Niro — the Raging Bull himself, now aged from boxer to trainer — is introduced in Hands of Stone bathed in Madison Square Garden’s overhead spotlights, more the image of a reigning champ than the promising fighter whose American debut his character Ray Arcel has come to see…

Ben-Hur Is Nothing New, but It Puts on a Decent Show

In a summer of disappointing reboots, underperforming sequels and rejected franchise bait, Ben-Hur is something rare: a remake no one asked for but weary moviegoers might accept as a small gift for lack of any better option. Timur Bekmambetov’s reimagining of William Wyler’s 1959 epic, itself preceded by two silent…

Jonah Hill Is Loosed in War Dogs, but the Comedy Has Too Much Hangover

Once, American comedies concerned underdog heroes who challenged the status quo and seized the territory of the upper-class characters who thought they were in control. Slobs vs. snobs. During the wartime administration of the lesser President Bush, the wealthy thoroughly dominated the culture, occupying America the way the army patrolled…