“Whiplash” is at once thrilling and horrifying. The story of a talented young jazz drummer and his cruelly sadistic mentor features powerful performances from Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons and editing so intricate and masterful, it feels like jazz itself. (Like, seriously, it should win every possible editing award there...
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What the Flick?! — The Judge
This courtroom drama feels like an overlong, overstuffed adaptation of a John Grisham airport paperback from the mid-1990s. It is clearly the work of a comedy director (David Dobkin) trying desperately to do something more substantive. But it has a few moments that earn their demands to be taken seriously,...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
The Judith Viorst children’s book is merely a springboard for this family-friendly comedy, which isn’t as cloying as it looks and features an appealing weird streak. You could do worse....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — St. Vincent
Some thoughts on the feel-good Bill Murray drama “St. Vincent,” which I saw and no one else did. It’s kinda terrible....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Gone Girl
Matt, Bibbs and I all went a little nuts for “Gone Girl.” This is our sans-spoiler review, so we tried to rave sufficiently about the film without giving too much away. But a spoilertastic edition follows, so be sure to watch that, too — but only once you’ve seen the...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Gone Girl Spoiler Talk
Don’t watch this until you’ve seen “Gone Girl”! Seriously. Matt, Bibbs and I go indepth on the film’s many twists and surprises....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Annabelle
The trailers make this creepy-doll horror flick look positively cringe-inducing. Instead, the prequel to “The Conjuring” is just silly and screechy, and — with the exception of a couple of decent jolts — not really scary after all....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — The Equalizer
Denzel Washington plays a man with a very particular set of skills. But “The Equalizer” is more intriguing as he slowly reveals those skills. By the third act, he’s just blowing things up and walking away from them without looking back. We all liked this, to a point....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Jimi: All Is By My Side
This is a Jimi Hendrix biography without any Jimi Hendrix music in it. That would sound like a problem, but writer-director John Ridley actually has taken an innovative approach to a famous life. I liked this movie a lot. Alonso was not so impressed....
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — The Boxtrolls
They’re trolls … in boxes. The painstaking stop-motion animation is impressive, but the overall tone of this family-friendly action comedy is rather grim and joyless. There’s a grotesquery to the characters and settings that can be darkly amusing at times but eventually feels smothering. We’re all kinda scattered on this...
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