Movie Review: Logan (2017)

by Tony Dayoub


When Ryan Reynolds was beating the bushes for an Oscar this past year, he dropped the tantalizing tidbit that even if his pattern-breaking, adult-oriented Deadpool failed to garner any nominations, he was sure Logan would have its turn at the awards dais. Wouldn't that be something, to see the childish superhero genre graduate to the same fully respected mythos status as the Western? Well, Logan is not the awards worthy graphic novel-based film Reynolds touted it as. But it is a damn good stab at that kind of a movie.

NYFF52 Opening Night Review: Gone Girl (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


[A disclaimer: Though I saw Gone Girl at an Atlanta press screening, I'm posting it alongside the rest of my coverage of the New York Film Festival since it is tonight's opening night gala selection. It opens in theaters across the country Friday, October 3rd.]

Among director David Fincher's movies, Gone Girl might end up ranking as well executed a puzzle film as The Game. It sounds like a simple statement, but there's a lot to unpack in it. Like The Game, Gone Girl is excellent, trashy fun; no more, no less. It's hard to see how Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn's bestseller, will have much of a chance for any major awards outside of the technical categories with one glaring exception, Rosamund Pike, whose part here is star-making. More on that later. As in Fight Club, Gone Girl is so dependent on its plot intricacies that one can't write much about it without giving something away. So trust me. This review will tread carefully. Finally, even for those who have read the novel, Fincher constructs Gone Girl in such a way that, like Zodiac, and again Fight Club and The Game, multiple viewings shall yield more and more rewards for the viewer.

Movie Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


The last time we saw private eye Matthew Scudder, he had a sunnier disposition and resembled Jeff Bridges. This was in his first film appearance, 1986's nasty 8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby's muddled final movie, written by Oliver Stone and a pseudonymous Robert Towne). Nearly 30 years on, Liam Neeson plays the detective in the unbelievably grimmer A Walk Among the Tombstones. It's a serviceable throwback to cult detective thrillers from the 70s like The Long Goodbye or Night Moves, movies with a flawed antihero at the center of a mystery that's really just an excuse to meet a cast of quirky supporting characters. So who better to direct it than Scott Frank, screenwriter for a number crime films based on literary potboilers and chock full of such eccentrics: Get Shorty, Heaven's Prisoners, Out of Sight, and the never-aired pilot for Hoke.