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SXSW ’17 Review: ‘WIN IT ALL’

A more lovable loser there may not be than Jake Johnson’s Eddie Garrett in Win It All. The 18th (!!!) feature from mumblecore originator Joe Swanberg, Win It All is the second “official” collaboration between Swanberg and Johnson, who paired up last year to middling success with Digging for Fire after previously working in a director-actor capacity on festival favorite Drinking Buddies. Swanberg’s brand of low-key, grounded comedy-drama has rarely been better than in Win It All as he and Johnson create an emotionally involving character study of a man whose addiction to gambling (and losing) has come back to bite him, just when life has started looking up. Read More

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Out In Theaters: ‘KNIGHT OF CUPS’

Terrence Malick’s latest game of twiddle sticks cinema peppers the landscape of celebrity ennui with vacuous narrative threads and listless visual poetry. A meandering, overlong death march towards nothingness, the latest from the American auteur is a showcase of a man who’s more than worn out his welcome, who has drip-dried every ounce of juice from the same re-wrung fruit  but still yet splashed it up on the screen like a car wreck. Anyone familiar with Malick’s filmography knows to expect little more of Knight of Cups than Christian Bale wandering the corridors of celebrity mansions, beautiful beach fronts and abandoned, dilapidated buildings while whispered trite reveries titter on in the background, theoretically contributing to a greater sense of purpose (that is just not there). In that regard, Malick has played to his devout audience bullheadedly,  ignoring any and all critiques of his last critical flounder, To The Wonder,  pursuing his own self-parodying style to pertinacious rigidity. Read More