Filmmaking brothers Josh and Benny Safdie are known for their gritty dramas shot on the streets of New York with amateur casts. For their latest, Good Time, they’ve managed to snag a genuine movie star in Robert Pattinson, excellent here as a slimy criminal whose attempt to break his mentally challenged brother out of a hospital goes pear-shaped. Good Time is so restless and energetic you’ll be out of breath by its climax, but it’s well worth the workout.
Comic star Aubrey Plaza gets a chance to stretch her dramatic muscles in dark stalker drama Ingrid Goes West. She’s the best thing about an otherwise mediocre movie, playing a troubled young woman who becomes obsessed with a social media celebrity (Elizabeth Olsen). It’s a mean spirited exercise, akin to standing by while forced to watch someone drown.
This week’s superhero movie is Justice League, which teams Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman with a bunch of second rate heroes. This one is shockingly cheap looking, with plot points that seem to keep contradicting themselves. At this point my tolerance for these lazily produced movies has run out, but there’s no excuse for a movie with this budget to be so bloody dull.
By Eric Hillis of themoviewaffler.com