Emma Seligman’s “Shiva Baby,” her feature debut, was originally slated to premiere at SXSW last March. A few days before its world premiere, the COVID-19 virus was declared a pandemic, and every event in the country, including SXSW, was forced to be canceled. I saw Seligman’s film around that time and was floored by the swirling energy of her camera and the edge-of-the-seat mise en scène. Seligman, who wrote, directed, and co-produced the film, manages to turn a Jewish day of mourning into a frightfully comic treat.
Read more‘Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar': Not Even Kristen Wiig Can Save This Unfunny Riff on Middle-Aged Women and Culottes [Review]
You can tell we’re living in a pandemic judging by the positive reviews the mediocre comedy “Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar” has been getting from critics. Ignore that. Unless you find Midwestern culotte culture amusing this ridiculous comedy, co-written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, plays like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch stretched out into ten times the normal length.
Read more‘Judas and the Black Messiah' Falls Short of its Ambitions [Sundance]
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” one of the big remaining question marks for the 2021 Oscars, has been sneakily screening for critics the last few weeks or so. Tonight it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Read more‘The White Tiger': A Slumdog's Rise to Gangsterdom [Review]
"The White Tiger," is the engrossing screen adaptation of Aravind Adiga's bestselling novel about the rich and poor in modern India. If you haven’t heard much about it, that’s because Netflix has decided to dump this essential film into their maze-like catalogue, without an ounce of Oscar promotion. For shame. Unlike some of the pretenders about to be unleashed before the Oscar deadline lifts next week, and those include “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and “Malcolm and Marie”, director Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Adiga’s source material is staggering stuff and worthy of Academy consideration.
Read more‘Soul': Pixar's 23rd Feature is an Existential Jazz Tale [Review]
A good chunk of Pixar and director Pete Docter’s “Soul” is set in the serene nirvana called The Great Before. The surreal nature of this afterworld, with its soft, glowing edges and inviting colors, is populated by Don Hertzfeldt-esque stick figures who go by the name of Counselors, omnipotent God-like beings reminiscent of Hertzfeldt’s minimalist style and the friendly UFO’s in Spielberg’s “Artificial Intelligence.”
Read more‘Hillbilly Elegy': Ron Howard Adapts's Dull Adaptation of Southern-Set Memoir [Review]
J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” is adapted to rigorous Oscar-bait effect by Oscar-nominee Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”). The result is the kind of big studio crowd-pleaser that used to be the norm in the ‘90s, but is now mocked by our meta generation.
Read more‘Sound of Metal': Riz Ahmed is a Metal Drummer With A Severe Case of Hearing Loss [Review]
Riz Ahmed is Ruben, a metal drummer whose hearing is rapidly deteriorating to oblivion in “Sound of Metal.” He happens to be dating Lou (Olivia Cooke) the singer of their metal duo band Blackgammon. When Ruben’s hearing starts to go and, eventually, in horrifyingly authentic ways, disappears, Lou becomes the voice of judgment, but only as his girlfriend.
Read more‘Mank' is a Playful, Technically Marvelous, But Slight Affair [Review]
David Fincher’s “Mank” will not be a movie with very much mass appeal. It will, however, adhere to the tastes of the producers in the Academy voting body who’ve always had a nostalgic yearning for the Golden-Age milieu depicted in Fincher’s film. This is a very dry, dialogue-driven ode to a bygone era of industry guys wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. Shot in black and white, and semi-inspired by the making of “Citizen Kane,” “Mank” chronicles a forgotten era of Hollywood lore, all seen through the eyes of its misunderstood screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz.
Read more‘Hubie Halloween': Another Disposable and Unfunny Movie From Adam Sandler [Review]
After “Uncut Gems,” some people expected Adam Sandler to continue on his path of making arthouse movies that play more to his strong suits as an actor. Yeah, good luck with that. The Sandman’s lucrative multimillion-dollar Netflix deal is still ongoing, dumb comedies must continue to be made. The endless career lows that stemmed from his Netflix contract include the likes of “The Ridiculous Six,” “Murder Mystery,” “The Week Of,” “Sandy Wexler,” and “The Do-Over.”
Read more‘Shithouse': SXSW Grand Jury Prize Winner is a Warmly Talkative Gen-Z Romance [Review]
The big winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s canceled SXSW was “Shithouse,” from director Cooper Raiff. This is 22-year-old Raiff’s nano-budget debut and it feels like an incredibly personal statement from him. He writes, directs, and stars in the film, with a little added help from his friends. Raiff plays a shy and dorky freshman struggling to adapt to dorm life. It all changes when he meets fellow freshman Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and spends a memorable night with her - this is when the film truly hits its stride, drunk on the power of dialogue and romantic discovery. Things do get awkward the morning after; she starts ignoring him, he tries to get her back. You know the drill.
Read more‘Bull': Yet Another American Allegory About Finding Redemption From a Horse [Review]
An American entry at last year’s “Un Certain Regard” section, Annie Silverstein’s “Bull” wants to be an authentic portrayal of teen angst in a rural and impoverished Texan town. The film is driven by an impressively concise and unemotional performance from Amber Havard, playing the fatherless 14-year-old protagonist, Kris, whose mother (Sara Albright) is behind bars. Grandma (Keeli Wheeler) takes over legal guardian duties, but she can only do so much as Kris has a knack of hanging with the wrong crowd in her south Texan neighborhood.
Read more‘Sea Fever': It's ‘Alien' at Sea in Familiar Body-Horror Survivalist Tale [Review]
“Mother of Jesus, a redhead!” That’s how loner marine biologist Siobhán (Hermione Corfield) is greeted by a tight-knit sea crew when she hops onboard a ragged fishing trawler in director Neasa Hardima’s sci-fi horror “Sea Fever.” The superstitious fishermen and women see redheads as bad luck, doctoral student Siobhán shrugs it off as mere folklore. She joins this sea expedition to study faunal behavior, planning on photographing the catches made on this expedition for scientific anomalies.
Read moreLil Peep Doc ‘Everybody's Everything': A Haunting and Touching Statement on Millennial Angst [Review]
I saw this doc about the late Lil Peep when it premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival back in March. “Everybody’s Everything” opens in select theaters on November 15th. It’s a dark and personal journey about the life of a lost and isolated millenial celebrity.
Read more‘Parasite': Bong Joon-ho's Film Feels like Kore-eda on Steroids [Review]
South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho is more known for genre fare such as “The Host,” “Snowpiercer,” “Memories of A Murder,” and “Okja,” but—and don’t be fooled by its title—in his latest film, “Parasite,” the monsters are all human and even scarier at that.
Read more‘Little Women' Screening Reaction
If you read this site then you would know that Greta Gerwig’s much-anticipated “Little Women” test-screened earlier in the summer, most of the reactions I had received were positive, those with a few qualms about the film were mostly irked by the slower, more character-developing first hour. At some point, Gerwig ended up going back to the editing room in late August, which then culminated in rumours implying “Little Women” would skip fall festivals. As these rumours were circulating a new edit of the film was test-screened, with some accounts pointing out to a tighter and more focused first half.
Read more‘Diego Maradona’: Cannes Doc Focuses on Controversial Athlete [Capsule]
The hotly-anticipated documentary “Diego Maradona” will be arriving on HBO this fall. Director Asif Kapadia’s chronicle of the life and times of the controversial soccer/football athlete was seen by yours truly at the Cannes Film Festival this past May, although it was sadly not reviewed.
Read more‘Stuber' Review: Buddy-Cop Movie Wastes the Talents of Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista
‘Raid’ star Iko Uwais shows up in “Stuber” but instead of taking advantage of his athletic talents, the movie has Uwais go through such mundane and lazily set-up action sequences. The entire movie, at times, works purely on the ingenious casting decision of having Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista buddy-cop their way through a pedantic plot.
Read more‘Rolling Thunder Revue' Review: Don’t Bother Calling This One a Rockumentary, It’s In a Genre All By Itself.
This unclassifiable documentary continually surprises you at every turn. “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese” highlights Dylan and company’s troubadour-like 1975 tour, which included violinist Scarlet Rivera and guitarist Mick Ronson, as they played gigs across America. The venues were smaller, barely any money was made, but in a country torn by Watergate, a never-ending war and the end of flower power, the healing power of music and camaraderie was needed not just for audiences but for the musicians themselves.
Read more‘Dark Phoenix' is the Worst X-Men Movie Ever Released [Review]
“Dark Phoenix” is supposed to be the X-Men finale before Disney takes over the franchise. Written, directed and produced by Simon Kinberg, the result is an embarrassing movie that is undeserving of this series’ best moments. Hell, it may very well be the worst X-men movie ever made, even more excruciating than the infamously bad “X-Men: The Last Stand.”
Read more‘Late Night' Tackles Feminism At Workplace In Commercially Predictable Ways [Review]
The idea that we can modernize familiar narrative tropes is something that Hollywood always strives in achieving. After all, why change a formula that has been working so well, and making money, on audiences since the beginning of time when you could just freshen it up for contemporary audiences, whose sensibilities, let’s be frank haven’t changed all that much. Please keep in mind that in the millions of years the homosapien has lived on this planet, their DNA has barely changed, nor has their way of responding to triggers which prompt the usual emotional reactions.
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