Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
On being, Descartes famously opined, “I think therefore I am.” Well, actually, he said, “Cogito, ergo sum,” but no one speaks Latin these days so you get the gist. After Yang, an existential science fiction movie from video essayist turned director Kogonada (Columbus), takes a step beyond the 17-century French philosopher to ponder what constitutes being in a world where humans and artificially-intelligent robots known as “technosapien” co-exist. Read More
First-time director Valdimar Jóhannsson has created something strikingly odd with his auspicious debut feature, Lamb, a part-creature feature, part-ruminant relationship drama about a pair of grieving parents who adopt a half-lamb, half-human baby. At times darkly funny – the human-lamb hybrid child has that effect – but played throughout as deadpan serious by its minimalist cast (led by the always impressive Noomi Rapace of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo acclaim), Lamb is a thought-provoking curio that begs questions about humankind’s need to command the natural world and their own lesser urges – and their inability to do so. Jóhannsson’s vision is strange but singular, adopted in kind by the exact studio that genre-defying fare like this ought to be adopted by, A24, though I remain unconvinced that it necessarily adds up to the kind of menacing profundity intended. Read More
David Lowery is a visual poet. Throughout his celebrated career, the Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story director has leaned on visual language and unconventional film grammar to connect with audiences, championing the emotional resonance of imagery over traditional narrative structure. In many ways, his films are in the same vein as American auteur Terrence Malick: thoughtful and dense, visually resplendent, whispery tone poems designated strictly for the Film Buff crowd. In that capacity, Lowery suffers Malick’s shortcomings, particularly as it pertains to resting too much within the opaque interiority of his characters and letting plotting fall by the wayside.
If you haven’t read the hysterically unhinged 148-tweet thread that details how the eponymous Aziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige) and “this white bitch” Stefani (Riley Keough) fell out, fear not: Zola will gladly fill in all the gory deets for you. One of the buzziest breakout splashes from 2020’s Sundance Film Festival, Zola is a kinetic social media-influenced dark comedy that adapts what was deemed “the greatest stripper saga ever tweeted” with visual style and sardonic pizzaz to spare. Exploding with personality and a flair for Gen-Z garishness (with too many tweet-notification audio drops to count), the latest great from A24 traps audience, alongside the titular Zola, in a prison-stay of a weekend as everything goes horribly wrong. Before it all went viral. Read More
“Never waste your pain” Maud (Morfydd Clark) advises, her voice rarely rising above a whisper, even in voiceover. A devout palliative nurse with quite a bit of emotional baggage, Maud searches desperately for meaning. More often than not, she finds that meaning in her own pain; pain suffered in the name of God. With Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), an ex-dancer knocking on the doorstep of the afterlife, she just might have found her purpose on this earth: to redeem and purify. Saving a soul proves nasty business, especially as intimate personal relationships blossom, but Maud will stop short of nothing to do just that, consequences be damned. Read More
In the rundown of worst roommate habits, persistent flatulence has to rank pretty highly. But I can’t imagine even the gnarliest gas could possibly compete with the sour stench of stale pee stewing in a bedpan in a tight communal space. Which brings us to The Lighthouse, a film wherein, from the first moments, odors assert themselves. The celluloid reeks of old piss, beefy farts, caked-up spunk, “rotten foreskin”, man musk, and drinkable kerosene. This is a movie that would tear down the house in Smell-O-Vision. Fortunately, we do not have to endure its reek. Read More
*The following interview contains spoilers for the movie ‘The Farewell’, as it is based on the real life story of Lulu Wang and, in a suiting intersection between art and artist, to speak about one is to speak about the other.
The single thought I had exiting A24’s The Farewell, a semi-autobiographical drama about writer-director Lulu Wang’s family’s choice to keep the family matriarch in the dark about her terminal cancer diagnosis, was “What does Nai Nai think of all this?” Wang’s film, a certifiable critical darling and indie box office stunner, reveals in the closing moments that, despite doctoral pessimism, her grandma is still alive and kicking today. The real shocker though came when Wang admitted that even though her Nai Nai is still with us, she still is completely in the dark when it comes to her health. Despite that fact that she visited the very film set where her granddaughter was making a movie about the whole, deeply personal experience. Read More
In The Death of Dick Long, three close friends and bandmates are horsing around and, wouldn’t you know it, Dick Long dies. Causes are…mysterious. Playing out like a demented Nickelback-version of Fargo, so begins the most incompetent criminal coverup of all time. Every effort Zeke (Michael Abbot Jr.) and Earl (Andre Hyland) take to conceal their part in the matter only serves to shape a police case against them. The film from Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) is of the jet-black-comedy variety, loaded with schadenfreude and cringe humor that only gets weirdest as it circles a truly wild conclusion. What’s most shocking is that as it turns increasingly deranged, it finds an unexpected sensitive side, turning these Alabama fuck-ups into more than one-dimensional laughing stocks. Do note, this is a textbook A24-style acquired-taste-only films exclusively for those truly looking to get weird. (B+) Read More
Every once in a while a new voice emerges that feels so innovative, so essential, so fully-fleshed out and whole, that you just want to sing its praises from the rooftop. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails’ stunning story of a friendship, a city, a home, has reduced me to a lame rom-com fuck boy. I want to scream it from the rooftops – I love this movie. Read More
Ignorance is power in A24’s celebrated Sundance hit The Farewell. The film follows Awkwafina’s Chinese family who, scattered across the globe, assemble when news breaks of the family matriarch’s terminal cancer diagnosis. The skinny is no one has told said matriarch, the family cooking up a ruse to keep that treasured info from her in increasingly heartbreaking and comical ways. The film from Lulu Wang is a rare family film that genuinely speaks to the deep, historied, and complicated bonds that tie while remaining thematically viable and content appropriate for practically all ages. Wang’s is a deeply felt and emotionally sincere film that benefits from its serio-comic nature, if not one that left me entirely moved. (B+) Read More