13 Best Releases From Bron Studios Studio
65
SimilarIce Age (2002), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005),
Watch afterAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), Evil Dead Rise (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023),
StudioBron Studios, Columbia Pictures, TSG Entertainment,
If nothing else, 65 proves that Adam Driver plays a marvelous survival hero. After his ship crash-lands on an uncharted world, his Mills is dazed and wounded—but not to the point that he does not remember what to do in an emergency. He's got a checklist memorized, and he can follow it until he's back together. As Mills treats his wound, catalogs the damage to his ship, and ultimately dons an environment suit to survey his crash site, Driver's body language shifts. Wooziness gives way to groundedness, and halting movements become smooth. Driver makes it clear that even when despairing and terrified, Mills knows what he's doing. Continue Reading →
Licorice Pizza
SimilarLet the Right One In (2008),
Watch afterNightmare Alley (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021), West Side Story (2021),
StudioBron Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Paul Thomas Anderson set out to make a love story with Licorice Pizza, and ended up creating his most joyful flick to date. Seemingly lacking is the dark heart so many of his stories contain, whether it’s in the wildly toxic relationship between designer and muse in Phantom Thread or brutal depictions of loss and loneliness in Magnolia. Instead, Licorice Pizza has a lightness he hasn’t truly approached since Punch-Drunk Love. Continue Reading →
House of Gucci
Watch afterDon't Look Up (2021), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021), West Side Story (2021),
StudioBron Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
There’s a word that exists in the Italian language that doesn’t quite have a counterpart in any other language: sprezzatura. What it essentially boils down to is the art of looking like you don’t care – a style of perfectly-studied imperfection. This idea goes back at least to the Renaissance, a time when the Gucci family earned its reputation as skilled saddlemakers to the rich and aristocratic. Or at least that’s how Aldo Gucci, the powerful and powerfully at-ease paterfamilias played by Al Pacino, relates the family history in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci. It is against this backdrop – of wealth, power, history, and above all, style – that Scott and screenwriters Roberto Bentivegna and Becky Johnston weave their story, an uneven yet compelling story about the only person who became a Gucci through their own making rather than by an accident of birth, and yet was forever an outsider. Continue Reading →
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
SimilarBring It On (2000), Free Willy (1993), Hellboy (2004), Night at the Museum (2006), Superman Returns (2006),
Watch afterEternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
StudioBron Studios, Columbia Pictures,
One of the few moments of genuine humanity from Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes before the movie starts. In the press screening intro video, director and co-writer Jason Reitman shows up to tell everyone to please enjoy the movie. Then he briefly mentions the high stakes pressure of taking up the mantle of a beloved film property from his father, Ivan Reitman. Continue Reading →
The Addams Family 2
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007),
StudioBron Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
The Addams Family characters have existed since 1938 and yet they’ve never felt as tired as they do in The Addams Family 2. A “kooky and spooky” family once known for subverting the norms is now the star of a movie that couldn’t be more ordinary. If you’ve seen one subpar computer-animated kids film from the last 15 years, you’ve probably seen all the worst bathroom and slapstick gags The Addams Family 2 has to offer. Here’s a feature that can’t be called a success unless it’s intended goal was to make one yearn for the sophistication of Hotel Transylvania 2. Continue Reading →
The Survivor
StudioBron Studios, Endeavor Content,
The post-WWII boxing drama wastes Ben Foster and Vicky Krieps in an overfamiliar prestige drama that botches its handling of the Holocaust.
For a one-time perennial Oscar-contending director, Barry Levinson has had one of the most curious careers of the 21st century. His recent work includes thrillers and comedies like Envy, The Bay, and Man of the Year. With Bill Murray vehicle Rock the Kasbah, Levinson seemed to have mildly scraped the zeitgeist once again. Now, with The Survivor he’s plunging back into the Oscar/prestige realm with The Survivor, a black-and-white Holocaust/ boxing drama.
The Survivor is based on the life of Harry (original name Hertzko) Haft, a Jewish man who survived Auschwitz by boxing as a ringer for a Nazi commander. When this becomes public knowledge, Haft is derided as a traitor by New York’s Jewish community. In execution, The Survivor hews closely to the standard patterns of prestige drama, to the point that there is very little distinct or interesting about its craft. Continue Reading →
Kin
Kin, AMC+’s new crime drama, follows in the footsteps of those underworld sagas that came before it. Set in Dublin, mostly in the homes of members of the Kinsella family, Kin focuses on warring Irish families deep in the drug trade. While its story rarely exceeds expectations for subject matter, brutality, or surprise, its performances are excellent, thanks to a team of veteran actors who have numerous scenes full of ample, chewy dialogue to showcase their talents. Continue Reading →
Candyman
As sparse as it is specific, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman feels like falling into a nightmare. It has the context, but the context feels increasingly shifted. It has the gravity, but the weight at hand seems to fall onto its audience in slow motion. It has a sense of remove but also a sense of intimacy, and as the picture develops, those schisms manage to lean into one another. Bernard Rose’s 1992 original was about the outsider looking in. DaCosta’s, on the other hand, is about the insider being forcibly removed from himself, and it’s a film as attuned to its own legacy as it is the legacy that’s been hoisted upon it. Continue Reading →
The Green Knight
SimilarHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), The Silent Partner (1978),
StudioA24, Bron Studios,
It’s no more than a few minutes into its 132-minute runtime that The Green Knight lays its cards on the table. It doesn’t really subvert expectations here; it’s not like it immediately carves out its identity. Rather, it makes itself clear in the most literal of ways, although in one that doesn’t register as such immediately. After an opening in which Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) wakes up hungover and half-naked, the camera tracks him from behind through sweaty medieval corridors and out into the cloud-covered morning. As he walks through the village, text flashes across the screen declaring itself “a filmed adaptation.” Continue Reading →
Fatherhood
StudioBron Studios, Columbia Pictures,
Adapted from Matthew Logelin’s Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love, written/directed by Paul Weitz, and co-written by Dana Schwartz, Fatherhood follows Matt (Kevin Hart), a father forced to raise his daughter alone when his wife Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) dies just after giving birth. Hart’s first big foray into dramatic acting has some heartwarming moments but is too bogged down by an awkward script and lack of dramatic weight. Continue Reading →
Those Who Wish Me Dead
StudioBron Studios, New Line Cinema,
While Those Who Wish Me Dead is coming out in theaters this weekend (be safe, especially if you're not vaccinated!), it's probably the movie to benefit most from Warner Bros. pandemic-fueled decision to simultaneously throw their releases up on HBO Max. From stem to stern, Taylor Sheridan's latest feels like the kind of movie you'd find on old-school HBO in the '90s, or FX or TNT, watching with your dad over a holiday weekend. It's silly, forgettable schlock, and yet I can't get too mad at it. Continue Reading →
Judas and the Black Messiah
SimilarBrubaker (1980), Chicago (2002), Freedom Writers (2007), Mississippi Burning (1988),
Primal Fear (1996)
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) Continue Reading →