Hustle
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), The Big Blue (1988),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022),
Adam Sandler doesn’t need to earn any good karma. With a comedy career spanning 25 years and a dramatic career consisting of two decades worth, though more sparingly, of working with auteur filmmakers, the Sandman has been given the green light around Hollywood. And more importantly, he’s been given a blank(ish) check by Netflix, the service most associated with streaming despite its recent struggles. Continue Reading →
The Batman
SimilarDie Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Hitman (2007), Mississippi Burning (1988),
Primal Fear (1996) Secret Window (2004), The Departed (2006),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
The opening shot of Matt Reeves' The Batman evokes, if nothing else, the opening shot of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation: we peer, ominously, through the binoculars of an unseen voyeur, looking at a young boy in a red ninja outfit playing with his father in a Gotham penthouse. While this isn't a flashback to young Bruce Wayne -- rather, we see Gotham's tough-on-crime Mayor Mitchell and his soon-to-be-orphaned boy -- the evocation is undeniable. By the time The Batman's three hours whiz past you, we'll have a similarly probing look into Bruce Wayne himself: what he prioritizes, what drives him, what he thinks he's doing for the city as Batman and what he realizes he should be doing. And it's that texture, that sense of interiority, that makes The Batman one of the best films of the year thus far, and one of the most fascinating cinematic adventures the character has to offer. Continue Reading →