First Man REVIEW

First Man (2018)

First Man is Damien Chazelle’s third film in a row about special individuals whose quest to achieve great things is linked to emotional isolation from others.

 Operation Finale REVIEW

Operation Finale (2018)

It was the experience of reporting in Jerusalem on the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial for The New Yorker that led the philosopher Hannah Arendt to coin her famous phrase “the banality of evil.”

 The Darkest Minds [video] POST

The Darkest Minds [video] (2018)

The Hunger Games’ Rue is now Ruby: Amandla Stenberg takes the spotlight in another YA dystopia that runs its race, but doesn’t diverge enough from its peers to leave anyone hungry for whatever comes next.

 Teen Titans Go! To the Movies [video] POST

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies [video] (2018)

The superhero movie to end all superhero movies? Or every superhero movie at once?

 Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation [video] POST

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation [video] (2018)

Clearly I am not a vampire. As you can see here, I’ve changed quite a bit in the last six years … not necessarily in my opinion of this franchise.

 Christopher Robin REVIEW

Christopher Robin (2018)

When such movies are done well, you get, say, The Incredibles or John Favreau’s Chef. When they aren’t, you get Jim Carrey in Mr. Popper’s Penguins or Steven Spielberg’s Hook — possibly the closest analogy for Christopher Robin, though Hook, for all its flaws, was clearly a personal film for Spielberg, whereas Christopher Robin feels cobbled together from bits and pieces of other movies without a cogent vision of its own.

 Mission: Impossible – Fallout REVIEW

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout completes possibly the most improbable cinematic hat trick in Hollywood history: An unpromising series that began with three patchy, uneven entries has now produced three terrifically entertaining ones.

 The <em>Dark Knight</em> trilogy: The inconclusive battle for Gotham&#8217;s soul ARTICLE

The Dark Knight trilogy: The inconclusive battle for Gotham’s soul

I’m struck by the extent to which Christopher Nolan’s celebrated Dark Knight trilogy (of which the monumental second chapter, The Dark Knight, was released 10 years ago this week), watched back-to-back, can be fruitfully considered as an extended comic-book riff on the story of Abraham and God’s judgment on Sodom in the Book of Genesis.

 Incredibles 2 [video] POST

Incredibles 2 [video] (2018)

I dared to hope this one would be more than merely good. I was afraid it would be less than good.

 Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation REVIEW

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

I’m not thrilled about the lack of worthy romantic leading men in recent Hollywood animation, but I prefer the theme in Frozen, about needing to get to know someone before deciding to get married, to this series’ magical, inexorable “Zing” moment.