Game attitude: Engaging cast makes Jumanji 2 surprisingly diverting
Sometimes a movie is worth seeing simply because the actors seem to be having such a blast playing off-type; Jumanji 2 is that sort of movie.
Almanac Weekly | Stage & Screen
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The Last Jedi brings fresh faces & ideas to the Star Wars universe
Beneath the shiny surface of an almost-universal stamp of approval among movie critics, Rian Johnson’s new chapter in the Star Wars saga, Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, has polarized the fandom like nothing has since the introduction of Jar Jar Binks.
Darkest Hour is Gary Oldman’s finest
Gary Oldman stars as Winston Churchill in director Joe Wright’s new film. Oldman completely sells the transformation, offering up the range of the man from supremely self-confident to near-broken.
Guillermo del Toro is back in form with The Shape of Water
What emerges at the core of del Toro’s new film is a revelation of what “humanness” means.
TSL in Hudson screens Sondheim’s Follies via National Theatre Live
Saturday, Dec. 16: One of Stephen Sondheim’s darkest stageworks — and that’s saying something — Follies, which debuted in 1971, doesn’t get revived very often, despite being regarded as a classic of musical theater. National Theatre’s revival has been called “superb.”
Rosendale Theatre stages two live plays from golden age of radio
Friday and Saturday, Dec. 15-16: the movie screen will be rolled up and the Rosendale Theatre stage dressed for live performances of two gems from the long and distinguished career of the “Poet Laureate of Radio,” Norman Corwin: The Plot to Overthrow Christmas and The Anatomy of Sound.
A boy learns life lessons from the afterlife in Coco
Coco’s look is derived from the friendly-skeleton iconography of Día de los Muertos celebrations and the delightfully lurid colors of the monster figurines known in Mexico as alebrijes.
Renovated UPAC reopens under new ownership
The freshly renovated Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC) in Midtown Kingston will reopen its doors this weekend after six months of construction. The 1,500-seat theater, which was built in 1927, was rescued from threatened demolition in the 1970s and added to the National Register of Historic Properties.
Frances McDormand is a force of nature in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
Some may roll their eyes at the prospect of yet another kickass heroine at a time when kickass heroines are in peril of being nominated Cliché of the Year. Others will happily point to Frances McDormand’s latest creation as the personification of the zeitgeist, with the movie’s release coinciding with a tsunami of revelations about sexual assaults.
Greta Gerwig struts her directorial chops in Lady Bird
Laurie Metcalf does an extraordinary job insinuating glimmers of forgivability into an eminently unsympathetic mother to Saoirse Ronan’s character in Lady Bird. It’s clear that Ronan’s Oscar-nominated 2015 performance in Brooklyn was no fluke.