Film

This was my first Guy Maddin film, and regardless of the mixed feelings after watching The Forbidden Room, this won’t be my last. This 2015 Canadian low-budget experiment is amorphous, a string of short stories, in which the next one unfurls from a character’s memory in the last one. The Wikipedia page for the film […]

Joe and Angela are married. Joe (Seth Rogen) is a music teacher, eager to get a head start on his lengthy bicycle commute home, telling his orchestra to “practice a few more times” on his way out. Angela (Olivia Wilde) is a stay-at-home-mom (and we learn later, also an art school grad) effervescently arranging their

It’s been a couple of months since I got a chance to watch this in one sitting, and it still resonates on a near-daily basis. Probably my favorite “character study,” or at least showcase of a character who is never cast in the light of a Hollywood-ified hero — or even the Hollywood-ified anti-hero. The

This review may contain spoilers. “The most personal is the most creative.” This film school 101 Martin Scorsese quote (which got even more popular when director Bong Joon Ho shouted it out during an Oscar winning acceptance speech) was the biggest question I had for what Scorsese was cooking up with his 2023 period epic.

An essay written for submission to film magazines: Richard Linklater and his filmography clearly express his curiosity about modern life, with many of his characters spiraling into lengthy soliloquies over societal standards, personal ambitions, and expectations, and the power memories have over decisions made. He looks at life through a magnifying glass, attempting to dissect any

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.” The film opens with this D. H. Lawrence quote, and the impression from the jump is that writer/director Scott Cooper channels his personal shame (and American guilt) on the mistreatment of the American indigenous into a moving film. “Hostiles” is a

It is a dizzying first watch, purposefully fitting in overwhelming dialogue and pitting the audience in the same state of confusion that Cary Grant finds himself in. But once it gets going, it’s pure popcorn: Hollywood at its golden age. In no way is anything that happens here rooted in reality, but no one at

This review may contain spoilers. I feel as though McDonagh underwent a deep undertaking of introspection during the lockdown, using an internal debate and channeling it into two characters.  Colm sees value in a person based on what they provide to HIM. Mozart provides him with inspiration, and with his music centuries old and thousands

Watched at the Wisconsin Film Festival: In the simplest of terms, the film is about what it means to be a man or a woman in Pakistan. It is the structures developed that force people into corners despite their actual anthropological wants and interests. While the queer relationship at the center of much of the controversy

This review may contain spoilers. 1. Ok first, this film is outrageous and completely over the top. The violence. The shoot out. The big asses. The fact that Pacino and De Niro literally sit in a coffee shop together, and then we still get 90 more minutes of Pacino trying to capture De Niro. It’s