Weddings can be a slog to sit through when they’re not your own, but if the wedding in question is anything like the one featured in the off the wall black comedy Wild Tales, well then send me an invite! Damián Szifron’s Oscar-nominated film from Argentina will grab you by the throat and not let…
Shot in Fincher Brown Vision with lots of piss-yellows and varying shades of brown and black, the film is eye-candy to the extreme, with beautiful and evocative production design by Claude Paré, and a terrific sense of how to fully utilize the 2.35:1 frame by cinematographer David Lanzenberg, who also photographed the exceedingly stylish thriller…
Mark Pellington’s contemplative and emotionally rigorous film Nostalgia is not going to be an easy movie for many people to experience. Told in the aesthetic key of current-phase Terrence Malick (minus all of the wide-angle stedicaming) but feeling tethered to something more universal and tangible, this is a defiantly artistic piece of independent filmmaking, and…
Darkest Hour is a solid movie. It’s a piece that has been designed around the promise of an actor knocking it out of the park as Winston Churchill, and on that level, Gary Oldman’s performance is precisely as good as you’ve been led to believe, and it’s the sort of thing that is very attractive…
I still can’t believe this one-sheet was contemplated, discussed, designed, tweaked, approved, printed, and distributed. Someone had to have lost their job over this. And when compared to the film’s other one-sheet that I’ve used in this review you REALLY have to question the artistic motivation for creating this truly shitty-amazing one-sheet for the rather…
Paddington is a delightful family film. I should know, as I’ve seen it roughly 150 times in the last two months, as our son Owen has become a wee-bit obsessed with the cuddly little bloke. This movie really does have it all for the entire family, as children will adore the titular character, and adults…
This is a very upsetting film, with a lot of troubling issues explored in just under two hours, and while it won’t be an easy-sit for many viewers, Thank You For Your Service is both timely and timeless, a portrait of those who need help but can’t easily attain it for any number of reasons,…
Sidney Lumet’s totally cracking 1986 political drama Power. I feel like my cinema-viewing life has been leading up to this moment. How had I not seen this terrific movie sooner? I’ll resist my temptation to get super obnoxious with this mini-review, but holy sh*t this movie rocks it – hard. You’ve got sleazy mustache Dick…
What Doesn’t Kill You is a nifty, gritty little crime gem that slipped past a good chunk of people back in 2008, and you really have to hand it to veteran character actor and first-time filmmaker Brian Goodman – he took traditional genre material and made it absolutely pop. This is an excellent but brutal…
I can remember the first time I saw Being John Malkovich. It was 1999, and I was a sophomore in college. Gas was ninety-seven cents a gallon and I didn’t have a cell-phone. I walked up to the local one-screen theater for a late afternoon showing, and watched something that I could never have fully…
Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin are sublime in this film, and when they are on screen together, there’s a nervous energy that gives way to unexpected warmth with jolts of action and physical humor that’s a joy to behold. Directed by the sly Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop, Going In Style, Scent of a…
I’m a big fan of the cinematic works of William Friedkin, and one of his lesser-discussed pictures is Rules of Engagement, which was released in 2000 during that time when Paramount was cranking out mid-budgeted military/cop-procedural/court-room programmers with lots of production polish and big-stars. Written by Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) from an original story by…
This is a real steak and potatoes action film, hold the romantic subplots, with a few side orders of testosterone and piss and vinegar on the side. Blunt, absurd, and frequently entertaining, Uncommon Valor is the sort of 80’s action film that I just love getting a chance to revisit, and as it was airing…
There isn’t one false moment in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. This is a nearly perfect film so far as I can tell, with no wasted opportunities, made with zero sense of pretension. The Wrestler is Aronofsky’s simplest, most straightforward film, but it’s no less accomplished than his other, more narratively ambitious efforts, which include Black…
What Maisie Knew is one of the most perceptive, honest, and devastating films that I’ve ever seen to involve a young child as its lead protagonist. Onata Aprile’s performance is unexpectedly extraordinary, projecting a sense of maturity well beyond her years (she was six years old at the time of filming), and is nothing less…
I’m Not Scared is a chilling film. Told exclusively through a child’s point of view, this 2003 Italian effort from director Gabriele Salvatores (the Oscar winning Mediterraneo) centers on a 10 year old boy who discovers that the people in his town have committed an unspeakable crime, and how he slowly realizes that evil lurks…
