Free Republic

Rancid, preposterous and hysterically over the top in ideas and execution, “once upon a time” perfectly describes writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is indeed another hopped-up fairy tale like every other Tarantino epic. In everything from the ghastly Reservoir Dogs to the screwy Pulp Fiction to the vastly superior Inglourious Basterds, the Tarantino oeuvre follows the same pattern: disorganized scripts that fall all over the screen like scattered newspaper clippings from the days when we still had newspapers, an over-long mixed bag of wonderful performances and strung-together scenes badly in need of tighter editing, leading...

There are bad movies everywhere. And then there is 97 minutes of total garbage called Hotel Artemis. This shoddy, gross, cruel and nauseating freak show is the work of Drew Pearce, a writer of no discernible talent (Iron Men 3, Mission Impossible—Rogue Nation), making an atrocious directing debut. Moronic drivel that truly qualifies as the worst movie of the year, it sinks amateurish moviemaking aimed at audiences with no taste to an alarming new low. A creepy combo of science fiction and bloody, slashing carnage, it’s set, for some unexplained reason, in 2028—on one busy night in a futuristic Los...

From the idiotic drug-addict hokum Requiem for a Dream to the overrated, overwrought and over-hyped Black Swan.....the films of wack job Darren Aronofsky have shown a dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment. But nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. ... [F]reak show is two hours of pretentious twaddle that tackles religion, paranoia, lust, rebellion, and a thirst for blood in a circus of grotesque debauchery to prove that being a...

From the idiotic drug-addict hokum Requiem for a Dream to the overrated, overwrought and over-hyped Black Swan, which I called “a lavishly staged Repulsion in toe shoes,” the films of wack job Darren Aronofsky have shown a dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment. But nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. Stealing ideas from Polanski, Fellini and Kubrick, he’s jerrybuilt an absurd Freudian nightmare that is more wet dream than bad...

Like the voters who plan to stay home on Election Day because they don’t like the candidates, potential filmgoers who avoid Hacksaw Ridge because they object to Mel Gibson will be the losers. Hacksaw Ridge, the true story of a conscientious objector who played a big role in winning World War II by enduring relentless punishment on and off the battlefield, saved countless lives on the front lines in the bloody Battle of Okinawa without ever carrying an assault weapon and became one of the most decorated heroes in military history without firing a single shot, is the best war...

The good news is that Tammy is not a crappy remake of the 1957 Tammy movie with Debbie Reynolds that spawned three sequels and a TV comedy series. The bad news is that this one is much worse. It’s a desperate and brainless vehicle for Melissa McCarthy, which she wrote herself, with her husband, Ben Falcone, who also directed, with all the efficiency and verve of an abandoned Volkswagen on the Jersey Turnpike. There isn’t a single shred of evidence that either of them has one iota of talent in the world of filmmaking. Tammy is not just a celebration...

The Men Who Stare at Goats, the latest George Clooney fiasco, is like getting stung by a wasp on the inside of your eyelid. You are blinded to all reason and the agony lasts for days. Despite Mr. Clooney’s easygoing charm and obvious good looks, his film choices point to an appalling lack of both intelligence and taste. He just doesn’t seem interested in narrative movies that make sense, and even worse, he has an exasperating tendency to turn his projects over to buddies and basketball cronies, whether or not they have any talent. (In George Clooney movies, talent is...

In a bizarre week as polarized as the national elections, Kinsey, a movie about sex, is a masterpiece, while The Polar Express and Finding Neverland, a couple of Christmas trifles for children, are so full of sugar they could rot your teeth. If this is what they mean by "moral values," drop me off in Sodom and Gomorrah. More about Kinsey, the stunning, exhilarating and phenomenal biography of legendary, earth-shattering, scientific sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, down below. First, the G-rated family fluff: With all the talk about the revolutionary cinematic technology with which director Robert Zemeckis "created" The Polar Express,"manufactured"...