• Bad Times at the El Royale

    October 11, 2018 - By 

    Drew Goddard has an attraction to high-concept ideas. The former Lost and Buffy The Vampire Slayer writer made his feature directorial debut with 2012’s Cabin in The Woods, a slasher meta-horror about a group of teens tormented by secret scientists and their army of canonical monsters and horror tropes. Cabin’s wall-breaking endeared it to genre die-hards, but it’s hard to recall much else the movie did that was scary or interesting. This problem is present, to much greater effect, in Bad Times at the El Royale. Goddard’s second film as writer-director isn’t quite as novel as Cabin, falling more comfortably…

  • Thor: Ragnorok

    October 27, 2017 - By 

    In July I wrote that Spider-Man: Homecoming was the funniest Marvel movie so far, a distinction that has lasted all of, oh, three months. Actually, Thor: Ragnorok is the funniest one yet. The Marvel factory, whatever its faults, is pumping out plain old good times on overtime hours. Ragnorok, the third and presumably final solo outing for Chris Hemsworth’s Men’s Health Goldilocks, retains some of the studio’s familiar issues, but makes up for them by being — for long stretches — honest to goodness hilarious. The Lord — sorry, God — of thunder is front of house, but Kiwi film-maker Taiki Waititi is the man of the hour,…