Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Timing is a fickle thing and often means a world of difference. Timing divides those who murder the stock market and those that are steamrolled by it. It’s the difference between perfectly scrambled eggs and inedible burnt yellow mush. And in the case of recently broken-up Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano), bad timing means that you have to quarantine with your ex during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in The End of Us. Read More
I’m calling an early shot here: if there’s one movie out of Sundance 2020 that stands a decent shot at a Best Picture nomination almost a year from now, it’s very likely The Courier (formerly titled Ironbark). The Cold War espionage thriller takes a classical approach to its telling, leaning into familiar biopic/historical nonfiction tropes, while viewing events through an extremely humanistic lens. Read More
A few nights into a mysterious university sleep study, Sarah finds herself perusing a bookshop, pulled towards the Phillip K. Dick entries on the shelf. Jeremy, her primary researcher and maybe-stalker, suggests she give Dick a read, referring to his work as “hauntingly sad”. This description – hauntingly sad – accurately captures the weirdly affecting (and low-key terrifying) tonality of Come True, a descent into sleep paralysis and ancestral nightmares coming to life. Vividly tragic, but always in a darkly unspeakable way, Come True captures that in-between realm separating sleep and dreams and twists it into a malevolent manifesto about the collective terror that lingers in the mysterious netherworld of slumber. Read More
For the better part of a century, Disney has been carefully formulating a template for blockbusting success. Churning out mega-hit after mega-hit on a semi-annual basis is no happy accident and the family-friendly behemoth has gotten that formula down pat – they’ve even exported it to the god-knows-how-many subdivisions of their corporate content creation stations. But going into any Disney animated movie specifically, you have a basic idea of what to expect: there will be a brave, slightly defiant female protagonist who doesn’t quite fit in with her community; an unbearably cute little animal sidekick who manages to be snarky even if they can’t talk; a quest to restore a kingdom; and a dead parent or two. You can never forget about the dead parent bit. Read More
Once you pop you just can’t stop. Or so goes the philosophy of the Joe and Anthony Russo when it comes to telling the story of a college-drop-out turned bank-robbing, dope-addicted war vet in Cherry. The directorial pair who rose to the highest of box office heights helming a handful of Marvel’s most critical and commercial smashes (including the last two Avengers mega-hits) prove uneasy with actual drama. Their telling of Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical best-seller of the same name – adapted in part by screenwriters Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg, is meandering and unjustifiable long-winded. Read More
J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot wears a lot of hats. What starts as a genuinely electrifying satire centered around a morally repugnant legal guardian who grifts the elderly out of their assets and autonomy slinks into all kinds of genre territory; becoming at various points a pulpy thriller, a tongue-in-cheek dark comedy, and a pointed takedown of our national tendency to slide the old and aging out of public view. It is at times trying to do too many things, and is noticeably better in certain arenas than others, but when Blakeson’s lampoon of carnivorous capitalism sinks its teeth in deep and his performers rein fire and brimstone down upon each other, I Care a Lot‘s fiendish joys are simply irresistible. Read More
It’s sometimes in the strangest places that the sweetest things lurk. Or such is the case with Mike P. Nelson’s 2021 sequel/reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise, a film series which began in 2003 and went on to spawn five sequels. Despite a dedicated fan base, the backwoods inbred cannibal horror franchise never managed any notable critical or commercial success but in flipping the script and starting basically from scratch, Nelson and writing partner Alan B. Elroy have breathed new life into a series that now shows no sign of running out of gas and a whole new highway of ideas to explore. Read More
Seattle, WA – The Seattle Film Critics Society (“SFCS”) announced the winners in 20 categories for the 2020 Seattle Film Critics Society Awards on Monday, February 15, 2021.
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland proved the big winner this year, landing five awards, including Best Picture of the Year. The film, documenting one woman’s turn to a modern-day nomadic lifestyle following the 2008 economic recession, also earned Zhao the Best Director award and a win for Best Film Editing. Frances McDormand was named Best Actress in a Leading Role, while Joshua James Richards’ work behind the camera secured a win for Best Cinematography. Read More
SXSW has a history of bombast. What was once a modest Austin festival that celebrated the local scene, music, and emerging artists grew into one of the largest and most-attended festivals the world over. As crowd sizes grew so too did the prestige and scale of debuts with massive blockbuster movies like Furious 7 or Ready Player One playing to salivating fans willing to wait hours to see the world premiere. Read More
The pull of the American Dream lies at the heart of Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a story about a Korean immigrant family seeking out their chunk of economic ascension on Arkansas farmland. Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) is Jacob Yi, an uncompromising patriarch dedicated to leaving his illustrious career of chicken sexing behind (more on this later) to grow crops from back home for the ever-increasing Korean-American population. Read More