Owen Gleiberman: Last News

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Northman,” a violent epic of Viking revenge, is not a good movie. It’s like “Gladiator” without the Colosseum and with a stubbornly uninteresting hulk avenger hero. (It also drags on 45 minutes longer than it should have.) A lot of critics have overpraised the movie because they feel invested in the career of Robert Eggers, the maverick indie director who made the spectral Puritan horror film “The Witch” (2015) and the even more impressive two-men-in-a-lighthouse gaga period fever dream “The Lighthouse” (2019).

Recently, Netflix has put out several popular documentaries, from fraud stories like Bad Vegan to dark serial killer tales like Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes. Their latest documentary film is about an altogether different subject – a fashion scandal.

Zack Sharf “Morbius” director Daniel Espinosa remains “proud” of his comic book tentpole despite the movie earning abysmal reviews from film critics. The Jared Leto-starring superhero movie boasts a paltry 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the lowest-rated Marvel films ever released. Espinosa confronted the film’s negative reviews in an interview with Insider.“When I did my first feature it was a small movie called ‘Babylon Disease,'” Espinosa said.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Prank” is no big whoop, but for a good stretch it’s a tartly written, engagingly nasty little comedy of high-school vengeance. It’s set during the senior year of Ben (Connor Kalopsis), the kind of eager, obsessive-compulsive overachiever who prints out several backup copies of his homework assignments, and Tanner (Ramona Young), a hacker, high on energy drinks, who’s his equally brainy but less responsible best friend. These two exist in their own unpopular cloistered geek space.

Zack Sharf Movies such as “Boogie Nights” have attempted to depict the porn industry in a feature film, but no film has ever shown just how raw, shocking and disturbing porn can be quite like Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure.” The movie is based on Thyberg’s 2013 short film about a young woman from Sweden who  moves to Los Angeles and tries to become a porn star. “Pleasure” originally premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, but it’s finally coming to theaters this year courtesy of Neon.Sofia Kappel stars in the leading role of Linnéa, who works as a porn star under the stage name “Bella Cherry.” Many of the actors in “Pleasure” come from the real porn industry, and Thyberg has said she researched the film by immersing herself in the porn scene.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“2nd Chance” may be the best Errol Morris movie that Errol Morris never made. It’s the first documentary feature directed by Ramin Bahrani, who has often brought a real-world edge to his dramas (“The White Tiger,” “Chop Shop”), and the figure at the film’s center could be a true-life character out of Morris land — one of those rational-on-the-surface, only-in-America compartmentalized crackpot geeks whose hidden dark depths just about scream, “Look out, I‘m a walking nonfiction metaphor!”In “2nd Chance,” that character is one Richard Davis, who invented the bulletproof vest as we know it.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterAfter living through a pandemic for nearly two years, Americans, as it turns out, were in desperate need of a laugh.That may explain why Paramount’s go-for-broke action comedy “Jackass Forever” triumphed at the domestic box office while Roland Emmerich’s disaster epic “Moonfall” turned into an epic disaster.“Jackass Forever,” the fourth installment in the ongoing saga of projectiles to the groin, collected $23 million from 3,604 North American locations in its debut, landing on the higher end of expectations. The latest “Jackass,” starring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Wee Man and other daredevils from MTV days, had been widely expected to win the weekend, but its victory is still surprising and impressive because it has been some time since a pure comedy has claimed the top spot on box office charts.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Emergency” starts out fast, loose, and boisterously nasty, with two buddies at the relatively upscale Buchanan University doing that thing that buddies do best: giving each other shit just for being who they are. Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins), in his button-down shirts, with a quick tongue but a tendency to gawk, is a straight-A straight arrow who’s invested in his studies.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Princess” is a perfectly timed, compulsively watchable once-over-lightly documentary. It’s a chronicle of Princess Diana culled entirely from television news footage and other public records.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“House of Gucci” has a transfixing backstabbing allure. It may be a drama about a crazy rich Euro chic Old World fashion dynasty, with a cast dominated by American actors scheming and emoting in gaudy Italian accents, but that doesn’t mean it’s some operatic piece of high camp.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticDean Stockwell, who died Sunday at 85, made every movie and television show he was in better. As an actor, he had a scurrilous twinkle that could light up a scene.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“No Time to Die” is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neo-classical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.Before I go further, though, lay me lay my baccarat cards on the table.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Jagged” is a sharp, lively, and entertaining deep-dive-into-the-archive music documentary. It tells the story of Alanis Morissette’s rise, and of how she took over (and changed) the pop music landscape, in 1995, with the release of “Jagged Little Pill.” The album went on to sell 33 million copies; it remains the second biggest-selling album of the ’90s, and the 12th biggest album of all time.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Candyman,” the 1992 slasher movie starring Tony Todd as a vengeful specter in a floor-length fur-lined coat, with a hook for a left hand and a devoted swarm of killer bees, was an urban-legend horror film that was ahead of its time but also, just maybe, a little too much of its time. Todd’s scowling ripper started off as an enslaved person’s son, Daniel Robitaille, who in the late 1800s was a successful artist.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Free Guy,” starring Ryan Reynolds as a minor character in a video game who breaks out of his drone existence, is one of the fizziest movies you’ll ever see that has a bona fide brain. At first, it may remind you of a lot of other films — it’s like “The Truman Show” crossed with “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” sprinkled with “The Lego Movie” and “Groundhog Day.” But it turns into a rollicking, candified head trip.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Suicide Squad” is cunningly scuzzy, disreputable fun. It’s being advertised as a movie “from the horrifyingly beautiful mind of James Gunn,” and as much as I love “Guardians of the Galaxy” and enjoyed most of its sequel, I can’t say that I ever thought of James Gunn as having a horrifyingly beautiful mind.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Plan B” is a girls-behaving-badly all-night-long road-trip comedy that’s built on a formula chassis, but it’s fast and funny, with a scandalous spirit, and it’s got a couple of lead performances that, if there’s any justice, should have the town talking. The film made me realize that almost every time a movie like this one comes along that has young women at the center of it, it’s been an independent film.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” is a lively formulaic action-hero origin story, dunked in combat grunge, that demonstrates how a resourceful lead actor can bend and heighten the meaning of a commercial thriller. In the opening sequence, which looks like an outtake from “Zero Dark Thirty” shot in the rubble of “Full Metal Jacket,” John Kelly (Michael B.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Unholy” is a good tight scary commercial theological horror film. Its spooks and demons unfurl within a pop version of Christianity, which makes it sound no more exotic than last week’s “Exorcist” knockoff or last year’s helping of the “Conjuring” franchise.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticTimothy Leary, the rock-star professor of 1960s acid-head mysticism, had a grin that said a lot about him. He was quite handsome, with that mane of silver-dark hair, the jutting chin and Irish eyes, that gleaming wall-of-teeth smile.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“It didn’t start with her.” That’s the most penetrating thing said about Bev (Amy Adams), the frazzled maternal trainwreck who makes everyone’s life miserable in Ron Howard’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” Bev is a parasite, an addict, a narcissist, and a desperate user of others, notably her own family. In a word, she’s a mess.