Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is perhaps one of the most absurd and unique films of the year. The film is completely self-aware, and that is the reason it is so much fun to watch. The film is (oddly) written by writer/director S. Craig Zahler who wrote and directed the gruesome Bone Tomahawk, the brutally…
“I wasn’t always Michael Caine. I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite,” tells Michael Caine as he recalls his early life in 1960s London. His mother was a housekeeper and father a fish butcher, a trade that Caine was supposed to follow into, but he didn’t because he can’t stand the smell of fish. My Generation,…
Escape Plan 2 is bad. It’s not b-movie “so bad it’s good”, it is just downright bad. It is a an over digitized, low budget, run and gun action flick where the two headliners, Sylvester Stallone and Dave Bautista have limited screen time. One must think that whatever budget this film had, mostly went to…
Solo: A Star Wars story is the Disney spinoff which tells the story of Han Solo. The film was estimated to reach between $130-$150m but has only reached $114.2m according to Deadline. So you may be thinking $114.2m is still a great total and by all accounts, it’s not embarrassingly bad but it is the…
HBO’s latest feature, a very modern interpretation of Ray Bradbury’s seminal novel Fahrenheit 451, almost cleared the hurdle of looking and feeling like a film that wasn’t made for television. The picture is headlined by Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon and has a production value that is comparable to HBO’s current programming; very much…
The latest Jim Carrey film is dark. Pitch black. It takes place in a world without cell phones and where videotape, tube television, and cassettes are prominent. It’s a fusion of Hostel and The Snowman but does an admirable job emulating the taut narrative and pristine aesthetic of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As the transgressive…
There is magical sense of purity to this film; innocence and wonder. Call Me By Your Name is that film that rarely gets made, and it’s a wonder that it does. Every word, every frame, every movement is delicately crafted that creates a film that is remarkably touching and special. Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer…
Coming off of his original and haunting debut film, Ex Machina, Alex Garland parlayed his newfound status and momentum into a visually rich and emotionally charged film headlined by the wonderful Natalie Portman. Annihilation is a film that aims high, shored up by an eclectic and visceral cast, but its plot is so lowkey that…
Guised in Paul Thomas Anderson’s sweeping period piece of dress making and desire and the tragically beautiful score by Johnny Greenwood is the simmering rage of Daniel Day-Lewis’ final film performance as Reynolds Woodcock, an obsessive and emotionally lethal fashion revolutionary in the best film of 2017, the Phantom Thread. There is so much to…
Darren Aronofsky returns to form with his latest darkly cerebral mother! The film pulls a bit of a bait and switch, leading the viewer to believe from the trailers that this is a reinterpretation of Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY. It’s not. Those who have followed Aronofsky’s career will somewhat know what to expect from this…
Margot Robbie dazzles in I, Tonya; which with its unbalanced and overly injected pop song narrative plays like someone trying to make a David O. Russell film that’s trying to be like a Martin Scorsese film. Yet at the same time the inconsistent tone and obnoxious performances compliment the ridiculous true story of Tonya Harding…
Let us set aside Ridley Scott’s ridiculous comments about Blade Runner 2049, Star Wars, his handling of Kevin Spacey, and the fact that Fox has dumped his Alien: Covenant sequel and focus on his latest picture, All the Money in the World. The film is “based on a true story” and stars a wonderful Michelle…
If Bright wasn’t the next film by the director and star of Suicide Squad, the critical reception would have been much different, not to mention the negative critical stigma that revolves around a Netlfix original feature. Fact of the matter is Bright isn’t as good as it should have been, but it’s a lot…
This isn’t our childhood Star Wars, nor is it deeply rooted in nostalgia. The Last Jedi continues the Skywalker saga with an inverted heroes journey of Kylo Ren and his continuous struggle with being pulled from the dark side back to the light, yet the film is this unorthodox mixture of overt silly comedy, beautiful…
Netflix continues to reign in with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to their exclusive programming, their latest is Andy and Jim: The Great Beyond which is an incredibly candid and raw retrospective interview with Jim Carrey discussing work on Man on the Moon where he played his hero Andy Kaufman. The film cuts…
Fresh off of the blatantly transgressive Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy delivers his next feature, Roman J. Israel, Esq., that walks a similar dark path as his previous film but doesn’t quite get there; including stellar performances from Denzel Washington in the title role, Carmen Ejogo, and a remarkable turn from Colin Farrell; the films irregular narrative…
