Rare is the film review that needs to start with a spoiler alert for something which *doesn’t* happen. But so it is for Free Solo, the extraordinary new documentary profiling lifelong climber Alex Honnold as he embarks on an unprecedented feat: scaling Yosemite’s daunting, thousand-metre-high El Capitan Wall without ropes, harnesses, or any other lifeline.
Category: Culture
Review: By Chloe’s meat mimicry mostly misses the mark
Between stories of animal rights abuses, health concerns and climate change, there have never been more reasons to cut out meat and dairy products entirely and take on a purely plant-powered lifestyle. From meatless Mondays to glossy vegan cookbooks, embracing a plant-only diet is becoming both easier and much more appetizing. Hopping aboard this trend is By Chloe …
Review: Meju’s Seoulful fare is worth a trip to Davis Square
At first glance, Meju bears all the hallmarks of the several hip bars that surround it in Davis Square. Meju is a relatively new Davis tenant, spinning out from Allston sibling Bibim last year, and is clearly dressed to fit in with its immediate surroundings: delicate lighting and a partial exposed-brick interior contribute to a familiar, though inviting, atmosphere. …
Review: Suvaai, offering rich rewards, demands a journey north
Head up Mass Ave from campus and you’ll pass mainstays like Clover and Flour, trendy vegetarian spots like Life Alive and Veggie Galaxy, and the chic eateries surrounding Harvard. But it’s worth the effort to keep going. The best ramen (Sapporo), pho (Pho House), and bagels (Bagelsaurus) on this side of the Charles line the quiet stretch between Harvard and Porter Squares. Head on a little further still and you’ll reach Suvaai. It’s an unassuming spot — keep your eyes open for the red lights strung up in the window, guiding you in like an airport runway …
Review: D.C. drama casts light on shady lobbying
If 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that politics today is all about performance — a conclusion inescapably reached in Miss Sloane, the new Beltway-based political thriller from John Madden. The eponymous Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is an ambitious politico working for a strictly amoral DC lobbying firm. Yet Sloane has a secret, something that passes for heresy in her firm: on some political issues, she actually cares …
Review: Darkness lurks in Hemingway’s island paradise
“Never meet your heroes” is the cardinal rule broken by reporter Ed Myers, the protagonist of Papa: Hemingway in Cuba, a largely true-to-life depiction of Ernest Hemingway’s sunset years. It’s 1957, and in the sepia-toned newsroom of the Miami Globe, Myers sweats over the latest draft of a fan letter to esteemed writer and recent Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway. A short time later, Myers receives an unexpected phone call from Hemingway himself, warmly inviting him on a trip to Cuba, the writer’s adopted home …
Review: WTF offers a unique perspective on life on the front line
Reviews often destroy movies, and only rarely, as in the case of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, do they create them. In 2011, a New York Times review of Kim Barker’s wartime memoir The Taliban Shuffle described Barker as “a sort of Tina Fey character, who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline rush of war.” This caught the eye of Fey herself, who began pulling strings to bring Barker’s story to movie audiences as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. …
Review: Michael Moore’s war of hearts and minds
The title of Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Where to Invade Next, seems to reflect ambivalence on the part of its creator. It is after all no coincidence that Moore’s trio of breakout box office hits — Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko — appeared during the administration of his antagonist-in-chief, George W. Bush. Though no one would pretend that mass shootings have subsided since the release of Bowling for Columbine, the election of President Obama saw the formal end of the Iraq War and the passing of health care reform — the subjects of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, respectively. The working title of Moore’s latest project might as well have been, What To Tackle Next? …
Review: Trumbo offers a shallow take on Hollywood’s writer’s bloc
It seems more than a little fitting that Jay Roach’s new biopic, Trumbo, is classified as a ‘Drama’ for the forthcoming Golden Globes in spite of its studio’s preference for it to be considered in the less competitive Comedy category. This is fitting not only since Trumbo is a movie that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, but also because it betrays the navel-gazing, self-referential tendencies of Hollywood that the movie initially seeks to satirize but ultimately falls victim to itself. …
Josh Cowls 