Directed by Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”), from an adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” by screenwriter Eric Heisserer (“Lights Out”), “Arrival” is the thinking person’s sci-fi.
Christopher Lawrence
Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
The bulk of this year’s Oscar nominees will come from films that are still awaiting release. It should be their time to shine, these small, thoughtful works of art. And yet they’ll still be overshadowed at the box office by spinoffs of two of the most successful franchises in movie history.
“Sausage Party” is so wrong, so go-for-broke insane, existing words aren’t enough to describe it. Shockrageous comes close. As does horristurbing.
He drops F-bombs and bodies in equal measure. His nonstop snark — “I’m about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the ’90s” — makes Iron Man sound as bland as Captain America. And he’s briefly shown pleasuring himself while holding a stuffed unicorn.
It certainly has its flaws, but compared to his previous cinematic efforts, the writer-director’s latest movie is practically his “Citizen Kane.”
Despite predictably solid performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, their movie just sort of lays there for a taxing 141 minutes, unsure of what it wants to be.
“The Drop” is a small, slow-burning character study stuffed with fully realized, lived-in characters.
Unlike most every other series about vampires, there’s absolutely nothing sexy about the bloodsuckers of Sunday’s new drama from Guillermo del Toro and “Lost’s” Carlton Cuse.
Oh, sure, they’re adorable when they’re little, wearing tiny outfits, learning sign language and scampering about the house like itty-bitty Parkour experts. Then, the next thing you know, they’re all grown up and taking the world by storm in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”
Here’s a quick snapshot of the new movies hitting theaters this week, including Jonah Hill’s “22 Jump Street” and Jonah Hill’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2.”
Rather than addressing cellphone users, 3-D that’s almost never worth the upcharge or the dozens of other reasons that people shun multiplexes, in January, the National Association of Theater Owners proposed a two-minute limit on movie trailers, meaning studios would have to trim them by 30 seconds.
The ferociously intense “The Raid: Redemption” was an instant classic. But writer-director Gareth Evans went and mucked things up by giving “The Raid 2” a plot. Still, there’s plenty to like in the sequel.
Kevin Costner has made great sports movies (“Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams”). He’s made good sports movies (“For Love of the Game” and “Tin Cup”). And he’s made “Draft Day.”
The Bravo-fication of the cable channel begins Tuesday with this appalling, wretched excuse of a series.
The traditional rollout of prestige pics is still more than a month away, yet successive weeks already have brought “Prisoners,” “Rush” and “Gravity.” Now, so is “Captain Phillips.”
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