More From Todd McCarthy
Int’l Critics Line: Todd McCarthy On China Blockbuster ‘The Battle At Lake Changjin’
Timed to the occasion of China's National Day holiday, the state spared no expense in making a most lavish and expensive slab of self-congratulatory movie propaganda with The Battle At Lake Changjin. Clocking in at nearly three hours, and spectacularly presented on an enormous IMAX screen, this is a gargantuan account…
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4 Comments Comment on Int’l Critics Line: Todd McCarthy On China Blockbuster ‘The Battle At Lake Changjin’
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International Critics Line
August 20, 2021
‘Antlers’ Review: Keri Russell In Scott Cooper’s Classy Horror Movie
Mess with imposing figures in the mythical lore of the ancient Native American tribes at your great peril —that would seem to be the message of Antlers, a classy horror outing that's perceptively cast and particularly attentive to the dead-end realities of a once-prosperous Oregon mining town.
Searchlight no doubt…
Todd McCarthy: Wim Wenders’ ‘Room 666’ Had A View Of The Future
After all the excitement and explosion of new talent in the 1960s and 1970s, the cinema in general and Hollywood in particular hit a dry spell in the 1980s, without question the dullest decade for movies on record. Hollywood studio fare became more standardized, most movies were too long, bloated and unambitious, and…
‘The Many Saints Of Newark’ Review: ‘The Sopranos’, An Origins Story
Tony Soprano may or may not be dead, but unfortunately James Gandolfini is, so to continue The Sopranos saga, creator David Chase has flipped back the calendar to craft something of an origins story for America's favorite crime family in The Many Saints Of Newark. Set for domestic release while wedded to a…
Toronto Review: Riz Ahmed In ‘Encounter’
Encounter is more of a promising indication of things to come from rising star Riz Ahmed and British director Michael Pearce than a satisfying work in its own right. A not-entirely-felicitous combination of family melodrama and sci-fi bug invasion, the roots of this Amazon feature stretch straight back to the…
Toronto Review: Melissa McCarthy In ‘The Starling’
If you can get all worked up about a somewhat aggressive little bird that, to the annoyance of homeowner Melissa McCarthy, has decided to take up residence in a tree on her property, you're welcome to The Starling, an astonishingly treacly film that's meant to be inspirational but is something close to agony to sit…
Toronto Review: Jake Gyllenhaal In ‘The Guilty’
After his labored and pointless remake of The Magnificent Seven five years ago and a sequel, The Equalizer 2, two years later, director Antoine Fuqua has repackaged yet another pre-existing entity in The Guilty. The highly pressurized and claustrophobic thriller is based on a Danish original that was the debut feature…
Telluride Review: Joaquin Phoenix In ‘C’mon C’mon’
Everyone speaks in the same struggling-to-be-sensitive manner in C'mon C'mon, a film of intelligence and insight that nonetheless remains a low-key and sometimes frustrating study of big-city shortfallers. Toplined by Joaquin Phoenix in his first outing since his Joker Oscar turn and highlighted by a precocious…
Telluride Review: Peter Hedges’ ‘The Same Storm’
How many films have been made in which the director never met the majority of the actors? How often have performers had to operate the camera themselves rather than the cinematographer or operator or director? Any number of films have been made under great duress, but The Same Storm is a rare bird, a scripted feature…
Telluride Review: ‘River’
Not to be confused with a similarly titled sci-fi suspense film that squeaked into release in July, this River, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, is a visually majestic, significantly airborne journey over a wide variety of rivers around the world. It is, on a moment-to-moment basis, stunning to behold…
Telluride Review: ‘The Rescue’
It was always going to be very difficult for documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin to equal their sweaty palms masterpiece Free Solo, but they come close enough with The Rescue. Unlike their 2018 Oscar-winner, which focused on one dare-devil climber's attempt to scale something close to a…
Telluride Review: Emelie Mahdavian’s Documentary ‘Bitterbrush’
Like a rock skimmed across the water's surface until it slows and quickly sinks, Bitterbrush only portrays the obvious of what's involved in being a cowpoke responsible for rounding up a herd of cows and calves across a vast territory and bringing them in. In the most mundane manner, we see what it takes for two young…
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