Blood On Her Name is a tightly focused thriller that asks what lengths we’ll go to conceal a murder.
Read MoreStanding Up, Falling Down Finds the Humor in a Life of Regrets→
/Featuring two career-best performances from Ben Schwartz and Billy Crystal, this is a film about lives filled with regrets, whether it’s too late to make good on past mistakes, and doing your best to smile your way through it.
Read MoreThe Truth About Marriage is a Fascinating Documentary→
/The Truth About Marriage is a simple but highly informative documentary about what makes relationships of all kinds work.
Read MoreSonic the Hedgehog is Fast-Paced Family Fun→
/Sonic is good! Were you expecting different? ‘O ye, of little faith.
Read MoreBirds of Prey is a Glittery and Grimy Party
/Go make incels angry by seeing Birds of Prey this weekend.
Read MoreGretel & Hansel - Superb Style Almost Makes Up for a Laborious Pace→
/An incredibly stylized retelling of a classic fairy tale came out last weekend. It was pretty mesmerizing.
Read MoreWeathering With You Dares to Dream of a Sunny Tomorrow→
/Weathering With You may not pack as much of an emotional punch as Your Name, but it’s still a beautiful and moving story nonetheless. Set in a Tokyo that’s facing relentless rainfall, it has a radical take on climate change: optimism.
Read MoreThe Report v. Dark Waters - Two True Important Stories of Systemic Injustices→
/Dark Waters is one of the many brilliant films getting snubbed this award season, which is a real shame. Both it and its spiritual sibling - The Report - are incredibly vital stories that need to be seen by as many people as possible. I wrote about the two films and what makes them so important.
Read MoreDolittle - A Bizarre and Expensive Mess→
/The climax of this movie involves Robert Downey Jr. shoving a leek up a dragon’s ass to remove skeletons and bagpipes from its rectum. The dragon thanks him by farting in his face. In another scene, a tiger named Barry gets kicked in the balls by a gorilla and cries “My Barry berries!”. Dolittle is both the life and death of cinema.
Read MoreUnderwater - A Suprisingly Solid Subterranean Thrill→
/It’s a mix of Alien and Dead Space, but set at the bottom of the ocean. A great setting for a survival horror movie, Underwater delivers decent thrills but never quite makes the jump from good to great.
Read MoreMy Hindu Friend - A Surreal and Moving Story→
/My Hindu Friend is the final movie from Argentina-born Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco. He was the first Latin American to ever be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars. This movie details the time in his life when he underwent extensive medical treatment for cancer, and contemplated life, death, and the point of either one. Sounds like a downer, but Babenco infuses moments of grotesquely funny surrealism into the film. Thanks to a stunning performance from the always amazing Willem Dafoe, it’s a beautiful send off for a historical director.
Read MoreJust Mercy Sheds Light on a Number of Injustices With One Story
/Just Mercy can often feel rather generic, but it sheds light on a vitally important injustice that plagues the United States to this day.
Read More1917 - A Visceral, Uncompromising Experience
/Filmed as a single, long take, 1917 is a technical masterpiece, practically demanding that you go see it in a theater. It’s the best war film since Dunkirk - more than just a movie, it’s an entire experience.
Read MoreCats, Is, Uh, Well...
/Like the terrifying offspring of Garfield and the demon from Insidious, here comes Cats.
Read MoreThe Overlong Ramblings of a Lifelong Star Wars Nerd
/Well, here we are. It’s been a week since a new Star Wars film set the internet on fire again, and like everyone else, I have some thoughts about it.
Read MoreHoney Boy - A Therapeutic Search for Tenderness→
/I was deeply moved by Honey Boy. Vulnerable and honest in its writing, beautifully directed, and impeccably acted, it plays like a form of therapy not just for its creator, but for anyone who knows similar pain.
Read MoreAtlantics - A Haunting Senegalese Romance Turned Ghost Story→
/This Senegalese film, which won second place at the Cannes Film Festival, is really something else. It’s a bittersweet romantic tale, a chilling ghost story, and a howl of rage against unjust capitalist and patriarchal constructs. Showing a side of the ever-growing refugee / migrant crisis that isn’t normally seen, it’s a film that shouldn’t be missed.
Read MoreI Lost My Body - A Melancholic Look at Loss→
/It’s so rare that we receive an animated film this unorthodox. In I Lost My Body, the feature-length debut of animator, writer, and director Jérémy Clapton, a disembodied hand becomes sentient and escapes from a Parisian medical lab, setting out on a quest to find its long lost body, and become whole again. It sounds silly, even a little macabre, but this French animated picture is surprisingly beautiful, and deeply moving.
Read MoreFrozen II - Bold, Bloated, and Beautiful→
/Frozen II bites off a good bit more than it can chew. The movie just isn’t long enough to bring all of its plot lines, characters, and conflicts together in a fully satisfying way. But it has far higher aspirations than the original, and its more mature and moodier themes and music, combined with stunning imagery and animation, make it hard not to feel something, or a lot of things, while watching it. It’s more of a sensory experience than anything, and I love and appreciate the more abstract approach it attempts. Very much worth the watch.
Read MoreCharlie's Angels - Too Generic to Be Much Fun→
/I am not the target audience for this movie so my opinion on it may not amount to much, but regardless, I still have one. This new Charlie’s Angels is missing all the campy, tongue-in-cheek fun of the ones that came before, most notably the 2000 version. That movie, amongst its hilarious and absurd sleaziness, is actually very clever about its critique of men and its representation of feminism. This movie, however, feels far too shallow, like it’s checking off boxes of what feminism is supposed to be without bothering to dig any deeper. It’s also just not very fun, or funny.
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