Eleanor Ringel, Movie Critic, was the film critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for almost 30 years. She was nominated multiple times for a Pulitzer Prize. She won the Best of Cox Critic, IMAGE Film & Video and Women In Film awards. An Atlanta native, she graduated from Westminster and Brown University. She was the critic on WXIA’s Noonday, a member of Entertainment Weekly's Critics Grid and wrote TV Guide’s movie/DVD. She is member of the National Society of Film Critics and currently talks about movies on WMLB and writes the Time Out column for the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
There’s a fairly famous stage direction in Shakespeare’s, “The Winter’s Tale” — the oddly matter-of-fact instruction: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
I thought about that as I watched a momma bear fold, spindle and mutilate Leonardo DiCaprio in the rough-and-ready frontier adventure, “The Revenant.”
You’ve probably heard of the old Steve McQueen/Yul Brynner western, “The Magnificent Seven.”
Well, so has Quentin Tarantino.
There’s been so much talk about “The Force Awakens” that the rest of the holiday movies are having trouble making themselves known.
So here we are looking at a long Christmas weekend. And quite a few movies opening, Here’s some guidance (well, let’s face it, some personal opinion.)
Tackling Shakespeare on film is always a risky proposition. Done well, it can be revelatory — not only a new way to approach the Bard, but also a way to make the Bard newly approachable to audiences.
However, Aussie filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth” so favors blood — buckets of blood — over poetry, it may as well have a number after the title. “The Scottish Play IV,” a la “Friday the 13th” or “Final Destination.” Make no mistake; this is the splatter “Macbeth.”
No doubt about it. The Kray brothers were beastie boys through and through.
Sadists in Saville Row suits, these twin brothers ruled the London underworld in the mini-mod ‘60s. While the Beatles were busy with “Rubber Soul,” the Krays were busy rubbing people out.
The less you know about Dalton Trumbo, the more you may like “Trumbo.”
“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston stars as the irascible, witty and courageous screenwriter whose movies include “Roman Holiday” and “Spartacus.”
“Spotlight” is the wretched title of one of the best movies of the year.
It’s possible the filmmakers chose it because it serves a double purpose. Not only does it convey darkness illuminated, but it’s also the name of a small investigative team at The Boston Globe.
“Steve Jobs” is a peculiar, thrilling and audacious film about a peculiar, thrilling and audacious man. And I can’t understand why no one wants to see it.
After a limited release in early October, the picture opened wide (as they say in The Biz) in about 2,411 theaters.
Yoko Ono was right. Women are the n-word of the world.
And they deserve far better than the mostly insufferable “Suffragette,” a drab, murky, dispiriting movie about the struggle for women’s suffrage in Great Britain, circa 1912.
The film is doubly frustrating because it has a good story to tell — one many of us don’t know.
The tempestuous head chef on the hugely popular reality show, “Hell’s Kitchen,” has nothing on Bradley Cooper’s hot-tempered cook in “Burnt.”
As culinary star Adam Jones, he throws pots, pans and hissy fits with alarming regularity.
She was one half of one of the most passionate kisses in the history of movies.
John Wayne pulls Maureen O’Hara to him in the midst of a violent storm and plants one on her. The scene is from “The Quiet Man,” John Ford’s romantic and thoroughly pixilated movie about an Ireland that never was but kind of always is.
It’s terrible to watch enchantment leak from a film.
It’s especially so when the primary source for the picture is one of the most enduring enchantments of all time: James M. Barrie’s tale of Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Neverland.
“Sicario” opens with a bang. Several bangs, actually.
We’re in the middle of a FBI raid taking place somewhere near Phoenix. The ostensible mission is to rescue drug-war hostages, but as Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her fellow agents soon discover, they’ve shot their way into something far worse.
To dismiss Nancy Meyers as a fifth-rate Nora Ephron is, admittedly, an insult.
To Nora Ephron.
Meyers has been writing and/or directing movies since 1980. In all that time, she’s made two and a half good movies: “Private Benjamin,” “Something’s Gotta Give” and the first half of “Baby Boom.”
In recent years, she’s become better known for the quality of her on-screen kitchens than the quality of her scripts. However, most of her later works have been more like harmless disappointments than out-and-out repulsive.
There’s a black hole in the middle of “Black Mass.”
And it isn’t Johnny Depp. He’s actually quite good as Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger, who held sway over the city for three decades.
Rather, the hole is the script. Quite simply, the filmmakers have told the wrong story. Sure, Whitey is the flash and Depp is the cash. But the only character faced with moral choices is John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), the FBI guy.
The ads for “Pawn Sacrifice” — to say nothing of the bombastic title — are so breathlessly whiz-bang that if I hadn’t already seen the movie, I would’ve assumed it was some sort of action flick.
Action, alas, is the last thing the film offers.
I’d sit through just about anything to spend time with Lily Tomlin.
Happily, “Grandma” is considerably better than just anything.
At a mere 80 minutes, Paul Weitz’s character-driven comedy may be slight, but it offers plenty of insight and humor. And, more importantly, as whole lotta Lily.
Noel Coward was wrong. Sometimes the right people travel. And sometimes, we get to go with them. At the movies, at least.
Robert Redford and Nick Nolte would seem very much the wrong people to be traveling in this adaptation of Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.”
Woody Allen is already doing Bad Woody Allen. We don’t need Noah Baumbach doing it, too.
Make that, Baumbach and his main squeeze/ muse, Greta Gerwig, who, along with co-writing “Mistress America,” is also one of the film’s stars.
The other one is Lola Kirke who plays Tracy, a freshman at Barnard. Tracy isn’t crazy about college. She describes it as “like being at a party where you don’t know anyone all the time.”
“Phoenix” reminds me of “The Lives of Others.”
Not because the plot, characters, themes or even tone are similar. But everyone who took a chance on “Others” – a 2006 German film set in East Berlin in the ‘80s – came away incredibly excited and engaged by what they had seen. People I thought would never in a zillion years even give the picture a look couldn’t stop talking about it.
So it is with “Phoenix,” if you’ll just go see it.
