Christian Bale 5 results
3.5Score

Review: Ford v Ferrari restores Le Mans lore

Movie review: Ford v Ferrari Director James Mangold creates a powerful dramatic engine with Christian Bale and Matt Damon as twin pistons in a turbo-diesel, bringing a dependable, constant chug of power that just keeps combusting in the analog-inspired Ford v Ferrari.  

The movies of TIFF 2019, but not all of them

You don't always get to see a whole movie at a film festival, but sometimes what you do see is enough, Jay Stone discovers By Jay Stone   TORONTO — Another thing that happens at film festivals is that you don’t see a whole movie because maybe you had to leave to get to another theatre for an even more important film, or because it’s late and you have to get some sleep or you’ll pass out, or because it’s late and you do pass out right there in the cinema and the nice lady next to you has to poke you in the ribs because it turns out you were snoring. You can actually follow a movie this way — often you hear enough dialogue that you dream it — unless it’s a foreign film, in which case you jerk yourself awake and you’re not sure where you are and it takes a few seconds for your eyes to focus enough to read the subtitles.   This is part of the reason that professional film criticism is a young person’s game, or at least an awake person’s ...

The Promise not worth keeping

#TIFF16: Critic's Dispatches A bad old-fashioned historical drama about the Armenian genocide revisits final days of Ottoman Empire while La La Land and few gin and gingers quench artistic thirst By Jay Stone TORONTO — They threw a party last night at the Toronto International Film Festival where they served a delicious drink made of gin and ginger ale, and you could have as many as you want. When I regained consciousness, it was time for The Promise, a bad old-fashioned historical drama in which the troubles of three little people — in this case, an Armenian apothecary (Oscar Isaac), a comely dance teacher (Charlotte Le Bon) and an American journalist (Christian Bale) — don’t amount to a hill of beans when they’re cast across the vast and clichéd canvas of tragedy during the First World War. Fusillades of exposition fly across the screen, capturing our doomed heroes in a crossfire of clunky dialogue, tired movie tropes, and earnest over-acting. Pass the gin and ...
3.5Score

Knight of Cups runneth over

Movie Review: Knight of Cups Drinking in Terrence Malick's imagery of deeply saturated Los Angeles will leave you in a mental stupor, but that seems to be the point of this meditation on movies  
4Score

The Big Short goes long on greed

Movie review: The Big Short Capitalizing on his comedy savvy talent, director-writer Adam McKay turns Wall Street's crooked ways into a fragmented farce that makes us laugh at our own funeral