Gleason scores, Anthropoid kills, Bad Moms just bad
Home Entertainment: November 1, 2016
Justin Lin puts Star Trek franchise into hyperdrive but fails to engage mental engines but there's plenty of other stars to check out on home platforms this week
By Katherine Monk
Star Trek Beyond (Directed by: Justin Lin, Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg) 2.5/5:
I wanted to love Star Trek Beyond as much as I enjoyed the other two reboots from mastermind J.J. Abrams, and yet, despite my ample enthusiasm for a franchise that puts friendship and humanity first, this third film starring Chris Pine as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock failed to make it out of the transporter room in one piece. There are many reasons why Beyond falls from a high orbit, but the most noticeable is the name on the director’s chair. Abrams was busy helming that other sci-fi juggernaut, leaving the Fast and the Furious’s Justin Lin to assemble the pieces and play the cosmic strings. Lin is good at car crashes and man ...
Wintour is Coming… to home entertainment
What's Streaming: August
The nights are getting shorter, but there's more to sink your eyeballs into when the sun goes down as Tom Hanks, the Met Gala, a High-Rise horror and The Lobster hit home
By Katherine Monk
The First Monday in May (3/5)
Who doesn’t want to go behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? I know I do, even if I’m just getting access to the costume gallery – that small square of space accessible by freight elevator and remote staircases in the bowels of the storied institution on Fifth Ave. Ever since its inception in 1946, the costume institute (now named after Vogue editor and chief fundraiser Anna Wintour) hosts the museum’s annual fundraising ball, which makes or breaks the annual operating budget on the first Monday in May. With so much riding on the Met Gala, you can feel the stress in curator Andrew Bolton’s fashionable fibers from the moment the movie opens. And it ramps up from there as we watch him prepare for the opening of ...
Talking ’bout my, my vag-g-g-ina
Home Entertainment: Amy Schumer - Live at the Apollo
The world's hottest comic brings a whole new world of oppression to the stage of the legendary Apollo Theatre for her first standup special on HBO
Hip Hip, Murray!
Home Entertainment
We're making a list, and checking it twice: Celebrating Bill’s many gifts to mark A Very Murray Christmas, airing Dec. 4 on Netflix.
By Chris Lackner
All I really need to know I learned from Bill Murray.
With his Netflix holiday special bowing Dec. 4, I’m reminded of the many gifts the craggy-faced, curmudgeonly comedian has given me.
As a child of the ’80s, most of my friends looked up to action heroes – from Arnie to Sly, Van Damme to Seagal. Not me. I emulated a smartass with a delightfully deadpan delivery. To wish you all A Very Murray Christmas, I’d like to celebrate the many things the actor has taught us:
Sarcasm is mightier than the sword: Male pop icons, from Luke Skywalker to Rocky, were largely men of action. My ultimate boyhood hero was Murray’s Peter Venkman from 1984’s Ghostbusters. The classic Murray character wielded dry sarcasm like a weapon, firing off effortless barbs to overcome adversity, motivate his team – or ...
Trainwreck lacks emotional carnage
Home Entertainment: November 10
Amy Schumer's blockbuster rom-com doesn't reinvent the comedy wheel but it does apply some rubber, while Ben Kingsley walks a mile in Ryan Reynolds body in Tarsem Singh's so so Self/Less
By Katherine Monk
Trainwreck 3/5
Starring: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, Vanessa Bayer
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Is it an Amy Schumer movie directed by Judd Apatow, or a Judd Apatow movie that stars Amy Schumer? It’s hard to tell, because Trainwreck is sexual, psychologically insightful, funny and, in the end, earnest with a very human message about being real, and putting love first.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. But I was expecting something a little less conventional from Schumer, the woman who’s been able to “transform comedy” – apparently overnight – by referring to her genitals as often as men. But is that truly transforming comedy, or a case of pushing the boundaries of conformity far enough to include ...
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 ...
