Denzel Washington brings August Wilson’s celebrated Fences to the screen in a sum-of-its-parts movie adaptation both eloquent and long-winded, thematically expansive yet, at times, claustrophobic. Working from a screenplay completed by Wilson prior to his 2005 death, Washington takes a traditional, almost reverential approach—perhaps…
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It’s a rarity in American film to observe some of the best actors working, delivering some of the most powerful dialogue of the last century—and in close-up, no less—but that is precisely what you get in Fences, Denzel Washington’s screen version of August Wilson’s…
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Spaced out stinker Passengers, which has been pushed hard by marketing its two big stars, is a confused and altogether empty fantasy that takes place on a huge ship careening through deep space. Isolation, love, companionship, stalking—all enroute to a newly inhabitable planet? Why…
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In a bravura act of movie invention, filmmaker Damien Chazelle has fashioned a throwback that’s also contemporary; a musical that is intensely dramatic; a love story of élan and heartbreak; and one of the best-ever movie love letters to starry-eyed, pure of heart struggling…
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A dazzling achievement in technique and emotion cementing the status of visionary young director Damien Chazelle as a modern auteur, La La Land is the most accomplished movie of 2016 and perhaps the most enjoyable, a musical throwback about Los Angeles dreamers pursuing art…
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Everything old is old again in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first “spinoff” installment from the beloved franchise and one that is largely unmemorable—save a terrific final act—and so slavish to its alignment with the mythology of that famous faraway galaxy it…
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Full disclosure—movie and pop star Hailee Steinfeld makes me feel like a teenage girl in all the best ways, not least because she can turn a pop song inside out with fully felt vocals and a music video persona sincere enough to let you…
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They don’t make them like they used to, except when they do. Hacksaw Ridge is one of the year’s best-constructed, most passionate movies, a true story of uncommon bravery both on and off the World War II battlefield, one of a conscientious objector who…
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The Light Between Oceans is the sort of lackluster movie only really talented people can make—pedigreed, mounted with conviction and an earnest to a fault. Unfortunately, it is also a mawkish soap opera with little in the way of real substance, and one that…
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