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FYC Capsule Review: ‘JUST MERCY’ 

A punched-up Lifetime movie with a laudable cast, Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy is a courtroom procedural where the message burns brighter than the filmmaking. A predictable affair with limited emotional stopping power, and one that plays by a very familiar rulebook, the third film from the Short Term 12 filmmaker follows a young civil rights defense lawyer played decently by Michael B. Jordan (who may have been a bit miscast here) who comes to the defense of convicted felons on Alabama’s death row. Just Mercy struggles to connect by virtue of its uninspired path-following nature, the movie cruising along on autopilot without ever really justifying what makes this particular story work as a feature film. This kind of filmmaking flourished in the 90s but just feels out of place and rearview mirror-y in 2019. Strong performances from Jamie Foxx and Tim Blake Nelson make the film almost worthwhile, though starlet Brie Larson has little more than a nothing role. All and all, Just Mercy is just meh. (C) Read More

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Bone Dry Procedural ’THE REPORT’ Values Facts Over Emotion

From longtime Steven Soderberg collaborator and writer/director Scott Z. Burns, The Report is a well-researched and competently constructed journalistic procedural that lacks in human emotion. Very much in a similar vein as movies like Spotlight and All the President’s Men, but lacking their towering sense of immediacy and tension, Burns’ film values objectivity and nonpartisanship most highly, allowing little room for things like a heartbeat or even the cinematic thrills customary with similar dramatic procedurals.  Read More

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SXSW ’17 Review: ‘COLOSSAL’

Colossal, about a drunken dead-ender who discovers she has become an unwitting remote control for a massive horned monstrosity, is a film at war with itself. On the one hand, the spectacularly strange conceit prompts a delicious revision of the monster movie genre. Still, the potential novelty fails to take flight, making Colossal both too strange for mainstream audiences who typically buy tickets for monsters bashing each other movies and not really strange enough to satisfy audiences hoping for something truly nutty. Read More