Doom and ROOM
Movie review: ROOM
Irish director Lenny Abrahamson uses carefully constructed frames to bring Emma Donoghue's story of confinement to the big screen, finding concrete results with a careful pour of emotion and a gifted young talent
Movie review: He Named Me Malala inspires
Documentary about teenager who was marked for death by the Taliban — and went on to win a Nobel prize — is a bit of a hagiography . . . . but she deserves one
He Named Me Malala
Featuring: Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai
Directed by: David Guggenheim
Rating: 3½ stars out of 5
Running time: 120 minutes
By Jay Stone
Malala Yousafzai was named after an Afghanistan folk heroine named Malali of Maiwand, who rallied fighters against British troops in 1880. Malala’s name was her destiny: when she was 14, she was shot by a Taliban gunman for the crime of going to school. One bullet hit her in the face, but she lived and went on to become a new kind of folk heroine, an advocate for the education of girls and a fearless fighter for equality. In 2014, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
He Named Me Malala is a documentary about this remarkable teenager and — as its title suggests — an introduction to her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who also risked death by ...
Spielberg burns Bridge of Spies with boredom
Movie Review: Bridge of Spies
Cold War thriller warmed over: Tom Hanks shuffles his favourite deck of characters to take on the role of a real life insurance lawyer who ends up tangled in the concertina wire of East-West tensions
Hacking into Steve Jobs
Danny Boyle's biopic makes elegant bid to open Jobs's console
Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet create all the dynamic tension required to propel Aaron Sorkin's minimalist screenplay into epic terrain, but the film is an inspiring success and a frustrating failure at the same time -- much like the man himself, writes Katherine Monk
Summer tentpoles hit home entertainment
What's new on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming services
With Avengers, Tomorrowland and San Andreas hitting the small screen in October, now everyone can get a sniff of the dogs of summer
By Katherine Monk
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
4/5 Stars
Directed by: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.
Starring: Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler.
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon emerged as the breakout director of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival thanks to this touching and cinematically vibrant exploration of high school life that pushes the dramatic needle into the red zone. Unlike other teen traumas that pivot on locker room taunts, mean girls and backstabbing bad apples, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl takes all that generic teen angst and throws it against the brick wall of mortality. Greg (Thomas Mann) is an ordinary high school senior looking to make it to graduation without getting noticed, but when his mother (Connie Britton) asks him to befriend Rachel (Olivia Cooke) after ...
Ramin Bahrani forecloses on 99 Homes
People: Rahmin Bahrani
The writer-director of Man Push Cart returns with 99 Homes, another story about social justice and an economic system that he says creates Donald Trumps, rewards greed and fails to protect families
By Katherine Monk
After directing Man Push Cart a decade ago, the late great Roger Ebert described director Ramin Bahrani as one of the most important new voices in cinema, hailing his ability to see the outsider and sympathize with those silently struggling to find their way.
His low-budget dramatic debut focused on a former Pakistani rock star who ended up selling food on the streets of Manhattan, and his more recent At Any Price starring Zac Efron took on the reality of genetically modified crops and their effect on America’s family farms.
He is unapologetic about his interest in themes concerning social justice, but Bahrani’s most recent feature, 99 Homes, may be the most trenchant piece of social commentary he’s made so far as it brings us ...
Movie review: The Walk is no coup
Robert Zemeckis's computer-generated spectacle about wire-walker Philippe Petit's famous promenade between the Twin Towers lacks any sense of tension because everything about it feels fake
