Movie Review: The Martian (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


News this week that liquid water has been discovered on Mars and that actor Matt Damon has repeatedly lodged his foot in his mouth (discussing whether gay actors should come out of the closet or not) almost begs for some kind of bad joke about outfitting a spacecraft and exiling the actor to the red planet ASAP. At worst, the news kinda overshadows promotional efforts for Damon's latest, The Martian, based on the novel by Andy Weir. At best, the two soundbites—one overwhelmingly positive, the other decidedly not—cancel each other out and give way to more discussion about this unlikely crowd-pleaser. I'm hoping for the latter, because The Martian fully deserves to be appreciated as a front-runner among the top films of the year.

Movie Review: Interstellar (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


An adventure into time, space and the human soul, Interstellar is more than reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But any similarities only heighten the sense that the nearly 50-year-old Stanley Kubrick science fiction classic may never be surpassed as the definitive movie on space exploration. And for director Christopher Nolan, that's a problem. Interstellar, with its integral dramatic dependence on concepts like the Einstein's theory of relativity and Newtonian physics, is Nolan's most significant stab at coherence. Yet the increased focus on the film's attendant technobabble only serves to demonstrate how inept Nolan is at advancing a story with anything that might resemble logic.

Zero Dark Thirty

by Tony Dayoub

Zero Dark Thirty begins with heart-wrenching audio recordings of 911 calls placed from inside the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. From there, the long awaited film about the manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden follows a rigid three-act structure that is one part Michael Mann-style procedural—in which we get to know a protagonist simply through process—and one part meta-analysis of how America once again lost its innocence, possibly for good this time. That director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal frame this film through a unique perspective rarely found in war films—that of a female—is the key innovation. Instead of attempting to duplicate the action beats of their last Academy Award-winning film, The Hurt Locker (2008), by predictably zeroing in on the SEAL operation to capture or kill Bin Laden, aka UBL, Bigelow and Boal open up the canvas to spin a sprawling tale involving everyone from CIA field operatives to their more political Washington-based intelligence counterparts, from suspicious informants to the most trustworthy of military officers.

Movie Review: The Tree of Life (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

Walking out of the sold-out Friday night screening of The Tree of Life felt a bit disconcerting. For nearly 2 1/2 hours an entire auditorium of strangers, my wife, and I sat raptly as we eavesdropped into one man's soul, as facilitated by director Terrence Malick. Though its central character is the adult Jack O'Brien, the actor who portrays him, Sean Penn, appears onscreen for, maybe, no more than a quarter of an hour. That is because, as with many of us, O'Brien dwells on the formative events of his youth. So instead, it is Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, as Jack's parents, and Hunter McCracken, as Young Jack, who carry us through most of the film. Told in stream-of-consciousness, The Tree of Life unfolds at a deliberate pace on a large–some might say cosmically so–canvas, so that by the film's conclusion one feels as if one has lived an entire lifetime during the film's relatively short time-span. This is not a criticism.