Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Aristotle posits that there are three types of friendships, those based in utility, pleasure or virtue, but Harpoon’s narrator (Stranger Thing’s Brett Gelman) would like to add a fourth: the friendship of history. These are friends by virtue of having been friends. Turns out that these friendships aren’t always the most healthy. Especially when you’re out to sea and uncover a love triangle of infidelity and have a harpoon (or speargun rather) at your immediate disposal. Read More
Fame is toxic. Particularly for the young. Ask River Phoenix. Or Lindsay Lohan. Brittany Spears. Macaulay Culkin. We’ve seen the tragedy of adolescent fame, one as old as the concept of fame itself, play out across history time and again. In Judy, the prepubescent bargain for fame opens the film. Flanked by a yellow brick road, a young Judy Garland (played by Darci Shaw) trades her songbird voice and every ounce of independence for the opportunity to be more than “just a mother” or another “office girl”. For the chance to be seen, admired, beloved by a nation. Unknowingly selling her soul to the devil of entertainment and damning herself to a challenging life of self-commodification, Judy is the OG tragedy girl struck down by fame’s cantankerous venom. Read More
This whole country’s a strip club. Or so says Jennifer Lopez’s hard-stripping, drug-dosing, cash-stealing Ramona. A stripper with a heart of mink fur, Ramona posits, “Someone’s got the money and the rest of us dance for it.” Her solution to this American ordeal is a brand of laissez-faire free market exchange: dress to kill, ensnare rich dudes, add drugs, run up their credit cards. Ramona and her merry band of clothing-optional pilferers trade in hitting the pole to hitting credit limits. And their gambit works. Skipping the whole lap dance flesh transaction and getting straight to the knock-out bling-bling money-please of it all, Ramona runs a crew of ambitious and unscrupulous ladies who take from the rich and give to themselves. Read More
It: Chapter Two, the highly anticipated sequel to 2017’s mega breakout hit It, is that impossibly rare horror sequel that is quite simply too big to fail. And you can damn well bet that the suits at Warner Bros are doing a high-kneed happy dance considering that, taken as a stand-alone film, It: Chapter Two is a bit of a slop-fest. Its unwieldy size and lack of editorial prowess makes for a patience-testing but scare-pocked horror odyssey better suited to the long-form narrative afforded by the small screen. In feature film form, It is more bloat than float. Read More
Sometimes a good performance comes in a, well, not so great package. Such is the story of Don’t Let Go, a hacky police procedural with loose sci-fi trappings. Leave it to David Oyelowo of Selma and Rise of the Planet of the Apes acclaim to leave a positive stain on an otherwise floundering film, his dedicated performance the only interesting thing of note. I spoke with the Nigerian-British-American actor about his career, which phone call he would place to the past to prevent some future tragedy, finding the emotionality of time travel, his favorite time travel movies, a long-awaited directorial debut and what’s next for the rising star. Read More
Coming from the world of theater, Paul Downs Colaizzo makes his directorial debut with Brittany Runs a Marathon, a somewhat-inspired-by-a-true-story about an NYC party-girl reclaiming her life by strapping on sneaks and going jogging. Starring a very game Jillian Bell, Brittany Runs a Marathon is a fitness and lifestyle glow-up for the “Yass queen” generation that is both humorous and human, an aspect that Colaizzo found essential in his telling of the story. The writer-director discussed his motivation for directing for the first time, how he hopes to inspire audiences to become the best versions of themselves, the challenges of “learning the technical stuff” and Jillian Bell’s intense physical transformation. Read More
And you thought your in-laws were bad. Ready or Not, the splatter-tastic, tongue-in-cheek horror comedy from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Southbound) is a subversive little slice of late summer mayhem that doubles as a masterclass in how not to welcome a new addition to the family. Grace (Samara Weaving) is marrying into the Le Domas family, a wealth-stricken collection of gaming barons, but her vows come with the unexpected consequence of a mandatory midnight game. When she draws a card that demands a ritualistic, bloody bout of hide and seek, the Le Domas’ playful inner world reveals itself to be one as sinister as it is opulent. Read More
In the era of an American president who openly mocks disabled people, Tyler Wilson and Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon is a defiantly feel-good revelation, one that dares to celebrate the differently-abled amongst us in a story whose behind-the-scenes drama is just as heartwarming as what lays on the page. The saga involves an aspiring actor with Down Syndrome, two homeless wanna-be filmmakers living out of a tent and a Hail Mary DM to Josh Brolin. And that’s all before the movie even gets started. Read More
The 12th year of any child’s life is hand’s down one of the hardest. Puberty. Crushes. Kissing – or, worse still, not kissing. Navigating tribal social hierarchies. Pimples. 12-year olds are cruel by nature, subhuman often. Nasty little balls of hormones and primordial grease, desperate for acceptance, playing at their sick game of systematic demoralization. But so too can they be funny little buggers – particularly in hindsight – and never moreso than in Point Grey Picture’s uproarious and devious little guy comedy, Good Boys. Read More
Where’d you go Richard Linklater? The homegrown Texan auteur known for such critical darlings as Boyhood, Dazed and Confused and the Before Trilogy as well as commercial hits like School of Rock and Bad News Bears has always been a bit of a wild card when it comes to what kind of movie he’ll spit out next but his choices have always been interesting, often experimental, and always gifted with some kind of personal touch, all elements that are almost entirely absent from his latest film, Where’d You Go Bernadette, a befuddling trainwreck of a movie and the worst film of 2019. Read More