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SIFF ’18 Capsule Review: ‘BREATH’

Ruminating surfer drama Breath, based on the best-seller from Tim Winton, cherishes the micro exchanges of male machismo. A thoughtful meditation on self-discovery, fear, and personal limitations, this coming-of-age drama from Simon Baker features delicate performances and beautiful oceanside cinematography. Within, two teenage boys befriend a veteran surfer and learn the ebb of his unstable world. The feature becomes briefly bogged down in a boy-thinks-he-becomes-man-by-proxy-of-sex plot but is buoyed by a writer’s sense of purpose and spirit for adventure, all of which allow the subtle emotionality to capture lightning. (B) Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘DEATH WISH’ 

In all of the nightmare scenarios that Eli Roth has cooked up in the past, he probably couldn’t have written a more unwelcoming and hostile zeitgeist to deliver his latest film, Death Wish, into. Just two weeks after an assailant took the lives of 17 victims at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the Bruce Willis-starring, gun-toting revenge fantasy – a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson film of the same name – champions vigilante justice and romanticizes gun violence in gleefully tone-deaf manner, one that only works in a deluded Trumpian analysis of America and opportunist justice. Worse still, with no style or swagger of its own to speak of, Death Wish has little flair to hang upon its misguided and decidedly uncritical core, making it one big, stinking waste of time and not much fun to boot.  Read More

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50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2018

Ahhh 2018. A year of promise. Of renewed hope. Of unlimited possibility. I advise you do your best to not  pay attention to the commander in chief’s tweets and bury your hand in the collective sand that is an unhealthy obsession with movies. Tis the very best medicine and nothing gets me more jazzed about covering the industry than looking at the year ahead and seeing just how many potential gems lay in wait. Each and every year I tell myself I’m not going to bother doing a Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies List. That someone else will do the work for me and I can just retweet it. And yet every year we get the same retreads, boring, blockbuter-loaded lists ad nauseam. Here goes my attempt to right that wrong.  Read More

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2017 Seattle Film Critics Society Nominations See BLADE RUNNER 2049, DUNKIRK, LADY BIRD AND SHAPE OF WATER Locked in Tight Race

Seattle, WA. – The Seattle Film Critics Society has announced nominations for the 2017 Seattle Film Critics Society Awards, honoring the best in film for 2017. Leading the field with 8 nominations is Denis Villeneuve’s epic, expansive, reimagining of a cult classic, Blade Runner 2049, earning a Best Picture nomination and a Best Director nomination for Villenueve. 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

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Out in Theaters: ‘LOGAN’

The superhero genre has (deservingly) caught a lot of flack over the years for its Saturday Morning Cartoons rendition of tentpole blockbuster cinema. The Marvel brand in particular was privy to the lather, rinse, repeat template, providing a steady stable of colorful smart asses who smash and bash and save the world, returning to the status quo (or shwarma) when all is said and done to await their next universe saving event. Then along came Deadpool. Say what you will the R-rated superhero flick – like for instance that it falls in line with many of the same familiar tropes it purports to mock – but the gleefully violent and “adult”-oriented box office smash opened the flood gates for more of its R-rated ilk, showing studios through the ever influential power of green (not Green Lantern mind you), that audiences were more than receptive to “mature” content in their superhero films. In fact, they were damn near starving for it.  Read More

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‘MOONLIGHT’ Takes Gold in 2016 Seattle Film Critics Society Awards

Seattle, WA – Barry Jenkins’ groundbreaking drama Moonlight was the big winner with Seattle’s film critics community, winning 6 Seattle Film Awards including Best Picture. In addition to winning the biggest prize as selected by the Seattle Film Critics Society, Jenkins was named Best Director and his screenplay, co-written with Tarell Alvin McCraney, earned Best Screenplay honors. The film’s cast took home the Best Ensemble Cast prize, with Mahershala Ali winning Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Juan, a father-figure of sorts to the film’s lead character Chiron, a young African-American male coming to terms with his sexual orientation. Elsewhere, the film nabbed a prize for Best Editing, turning 10 nominations into 6 wins. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘DEEPWATER HORIZON’

Oil. We use it every day. It fills our gas tanks. Warms our homes. Even makes up the roads we drive. In Deepwater Horizon, the coveted resource turns on man 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, becoming a nightmarish force that ends the life of 11 crew members onboard the fated vessel and torments the slurry of survivors racing to escape its scarlet abyss. With all the fury of a possessed malevolent entity, the routine drill site turns to fire and brimstone one fated evening, Dante’s inferno is brought roaring to life, and a brave few must do all they can to save as many as they can. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘BLAIR WITCH’

When Adam Wingard’s newest feature was simply called The Woods, it was one of my most anticipated features of the season. A minimalist poster and bone-chilling trailer only intensified my desire to take in the latest offering from the director responsible for such horror knockouts as You’re Next and The Guest. On more than one occasion, a band horror-loving critics sat huddled in the dusk of the theater, waiting for our latest press screening to gear up, pining for the coming collaboration between Wingard and penman cohort Simon Barrett. And then one night, like a nuclear bomb, it hit. The news that shook the horror community to their bones. We had all been bamboozled. The Woods was indeed Blair Witch. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘MORGAN’

When you assemble the likes of Kate Mara (House of Cards), Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones),  Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch), Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight) and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) you’d expect all the girl power onboard to make for some exceptionally high voltage x-chromosome electricity. I mean we’re talking Ygritte, Sue Storm, Thomasin, Daisy Domergue and Wai Lin all huddled under one hot tin roof, sermonizing, philosophizing and fisticuffing under the purview of a Ridley Scott protege. But all the estrogen in the world can’t overpower Morgan’s tepid and over-familiar “lab monster” plot nor fuel its running-on-fumes third act.
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