Lauren Monroe (Lily Collins) is the privileged daughter of a white and very wealthy family. She seems quite young to be the District Attorney already, and yet that it what she is. You might think this is reason to be proud, but her father (Patrick Warburton), a banker, sneered at public service and would have preferred she work for a private firm where she could be defending her family’s interests. Her younger brother William (Chace Crawford) is a Congressman running for a second term. He also seems young for his position, but let’s just go with it. He’s vehemently denying that the family has made financial contributions in exchange for union votes, but his campaign has the slight whiff of scandal. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that William is his father’s favourite child, a valuation that seems starkly measured in his will when their father dies unexpectedly. It would seem that he loved his son about 20 times as much as he loved his daughter, if love can be measured in the millions of dollars inherited by them.
But Lauren doesn’t just get a slap in the face in the will, she also inherits a family secret. And boy is it a doozie. A serious, serious doozie, but I will refrain from saying anything more and I implore you to go into this film not knowing any more than this. A thriller works best when you allow it to thrill you, and thrills function best with the element of surprise on their side. Modern movie trailers seem to have forgotten this, but since Inheritance is found on Netflix, there’s a good chance you can make it there without accidentally spoiling it for yourself.
Netflix has vast resources and it churns out content at a truly remarkable rate. This results in both hits and misses, but I heard a Netflix executive tell their team that they weren’t failing enough, which meant they weren’t taking enough risks. Being Netflix means you can afford to take more risks on the kind of content that big studios have all but given up on: indie movies, untested directors, new formats, and more. Their deep pockets are attracting increasingly impressive talent, and it is quickly becoming a real Oscar contender. Audiences have largely learned to go into Netflix movies with low expectations; the movie might be great, but is much more likely to be mediocre, and quite often they’re very, very bad. But having paid a monthly fee rather than a per-movie rental, it’s easier to take chances on movies we’re not sure we’ll like. It’s movie watching with no strings attach. But once in a while, it achieves cultural zeitgeist; early on in our global quarantine, the world consumed The Tiger King together, and it united us even in our isolation. Before that, it was Making a Murderer that stirred us into disrupting the legal system. Inheritance isn’t going to be universally beloved. It is not a great film or an important one, but is a good, solid thriller, the way thriller should be made. It’s also an increasingly rare opportunity to go into a movie fairly blind, and allow one’s self to be surprised, and entertained.
Smog obscures the screen as a trench-coated silhouette walks down a path illuminated only by neon light: is this a recycled set from Sin City or are you just happy to see me? There’s really nothing new to see here and the whole thing is just a bit uninspired – or, well, inspired rather obviously by other, familiar things. Luckily for Terminal, I can’t keep my eyes off Margot Robbie. She’s an exceptionally eye-catching woman, but as her past few films have indicated, she’s also quite an actress. So while she’s the only reason to watch this film, it’s also a shame how badly it wastes her. The movie wants to be cleverer than it is. It wants to throw some real curve balls at you, but it has simply cut and pasted the Wikipedia entry for curve balls and put it on the screen. Yes, Robbie is sexy as hell, and sure, many men, and most women, would follow her down the depths of hell without too many questions. But she deserves to be a real character, flesh and blood, with machinations and motivations. Instead, Stein fails to ground this movie in anything solid – what are the rules of this universe? Where have these people come from? Why should we care? It’s all smoke and mirrors, it lives for the atmosphere but once the smoke clears, there’s just not much there, except Mike Myers being a distraction, acting like he’s in an SNL sketch.
Aside from the awkward colon in the title, the most annoying thing about the Mission: Impossible series has always been Tom Cruise’s massive over-reliance on rubber masks (yes, even moreso than his ridiculous excessive arm-pumping while running). While Mission: Impossible – Fallout doesn’t totally avoid the rubber mask cliché, it tweaks it enough to feel fresh. And every once in a while, despite how familiar the M:I formula has become after six attempts, the movie will sneak one by you, winking as it does.
means 300k of the festival’s attendees were vying for just 1000 seats in the venue. Some people may be discouraged by those odds, but not Sean! He gamely spent hours lined up outside (while I watched 
to find a Gremlin long after he’d already approved the scene, and he’ll continue to be surprised by Easter eggs (how fitting, for this weekend!), as will we. In subsequent viewings, you could easily play a drinking game with friends, or a Bingo game would be fun, just spotting all the cool things the brilliant art department and visual effects people slipped in there – it’s like the hoarders of movies with so many layers it’ll take forever before you reach the dead cat layer.
Paul crash-landed here decades ago and has put up amiably with interrogation and testing, but he’s making his escape now that the only thing left is to slice and dice him. Is the government simply going to let him get away? Of course not. Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, and Joe Lo Truglio are all hot on his tail (he doesn’t have a tail). Graeme and Clive have an RV and a religious one-eyed woman named Ruth (Kristen Wiig) and that’s about it: not ideal fleeing-the-government provisions, but it’ll have to do.
We were treated tonight to a marathon of the new trilogy of Star Trek movies, including a screening of Star Trek Beyond. Seeing the first two reminded me how good Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness are, and seeing them all in a row made me all the more sure that Star Trek Beyond is my favourite of the three.
Yelchin, having died so tragically after filming was complete, is a key cast member in all three and is excellent in Star Trek Beyond (as always). But it’s bittersweet to watch, as his posthumous presence is harder to take than his absence would have been. Every one of his scenes serves as a reminder that there will be no more Chekov in the instalments to come. He will be sincerely missed but it feels right that his role will not be recast. May he rest in peace.
wonderful job of capturing the sarcastic Bones and the quiet pleasure Spock takes in driving Bones crazy, while letting us see that underneath it all there is nothing but love and respect between them.
irrelevant to the movie, which makes the insult all the more infuriating.
use the person who came up with this expression has never seen a man with a simple head cold? To “man up” implies a manly scenario, and a failure of a certain man to fulfill his obligations or responsibilities as a man. In the movie’s case, Pegg has an unfaithful ex-wife, and a charming if slightly mendacious new flame. How exactly do either of those scenarios require testicles in particular? And what would become of this movie if “man up” didn’t mean create a big, Hollywood-style hullabaloo where you declare your undying love for a woman you just met in front of a crowd of rowdy strangers, but instead “man up” meant, admit your fears, communicate 
honestly, be flexible, be vulnerable. Or what if being this kind of bold and brave didn’t require a Y chromosome and it could be Lake Bell, in all her ovarian glory, reaching across the void? The phrase “man up” implies such a rigid view of masculinity it punishes both the sexes (and all the sexes in between) and leaves us all sitting in painful little boxes having to watch insipid little romcoms the world could do wi
thout.
) British Intelligence counterpart run side by side, you look like twins! Superfast, Olympic calibre twins!
off as Tom Cruise trying too hard to prove he is an 
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 