The Edge of Seventeen is a funny if overly familiar story of a female high school student learning to adjust to her surroundings and hormones and the changing attitudes of the people around her. Hailee Steinfeld is unsurprisingly confident as the lead character, but for me, the real discovery of the movie was Haley Lu…
Don’t Knock Twice is a horror film about a mother desperate to reconnect with her troubled daughter who then becomes embroiled in the urban legend of a demonic witch. This Horror film throws you through every single genre and moves a Horror movie can make you experience. Throughout the entire movie you are questioning…
A film that strips away any narrative pretense and bloat, favoring classical and exquisitely shot and cut fight sequences with a terse screenplay (written by Soderbergh frenemy Lem Dobbs) that only divulges exactly what you need to know and nothing more. Gina Carano, a former MMA star, isn’t a particularly expressive or emotive screen presence,…
I very much enjoyed last year’s much-derided thriller The Girl on the Train. It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen, and it’s hardly the worst. I like a good, steamy, erotic thriller, the types of movies that used to be original screenplay spec sales back in the 90’s. But nowadays, these genre thrillers are…
Spike Lee has always been a very politically and socially conscious filmmaker, with much of his work touching on topical elements that link us all together as human beings. This makes his straight-up genre picture, Inside Man, all the more atypical, as it’s one of the few gun-for-hire pictures that he’s put his name…
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is not a good movie. It pains me to report this, as Ang Lee is a master storyteller and filmmaker, and I’ve been a fan of all of his films (yes, even Ride with the Devil, which is hugely underrated). However, nothing about this movie worked for me as a…
Shoot ‘Em Up is a wildly silly R-rated cartoon of a movie, tremendously fun and berserk and made with low-budget zeal and ingenuity. Playing like a Looney Tunes adventure on a few hits of PCP, this is pure comic-book-movie shenanigans, but instead of superheroes from another galaxy, the characters in this oddly eccentric actioner bounce…
The Untouchables is a stone-cold classic. Brian De Palma’s bravura direction amounted to a clinic on how to make a supreme piece of studio funded entertainment, with showboating performances from a massive cast, all filtered through the elegant and stylized dialogue courtesy of David Mamet; his vulgar poetry really sets this one on fire. It’s…
Set in 1971, Kris is sentenced to two years in a rural Borstal and the film follows the day to day life of the boys of Borstal and their preparation for life on the outside. The movie revolves around Kris (Matthew Winters), a young lad who has been sentenced to serve his time at the…
It’s that time of year again where I pack my belongings and head to London for the 2017 EE BAFTA awards. It was no surprise to me when La La Land picked up the best film award. For popularity and sheer quality alone that award was predicted months in advance. There were some incredible movies on…
Sobering. Troubling. Shattering. The 2010 documentary Nostalgia for the Light hits with the blunt emotional force of a freight train, while also providing a glimpse into the cosmos that has rarely been seen. This revelatory and consummately constructed 90 minute film delves into one of the world’s great genocidal atrocities, and is startlingly unique in…
I’m picky when it comes to fantasy movies. Very picky. I’m not a fan of LOTR or any of its seemingly endless derivatives. But while not perfect, I’ve always had a HUGE soft spot for Rob Bowman’s Reign of Fire, which sports a genre-popping screenplay by Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka, and Matthew Greenberg that had…
Denzel Washington delivers a volcanic performance in his latest directorial effort, Fences, while the magnificent Viola Davis counters with her own blistering piece of internalized acting; the two artists literally explode off of the screen. Efficiently directed by Washington, the film was adapted for the screen by playwright August Wilson, whose original, Pulitzer-winning effort was…
t’s A Wonderful Life remains a stone cold classic of American cinema. Masterwork goes without saying; the very definition of unforgettable. Frank Capra knew how to mix true sadness with true uplift, and when you look back on the film now it’s sort of easy to understand why it wasn’t met with universal acclaim and…
Brad Bird’s wonderful film The Iron Giant has a ton of honest and genuine heart to match its retro animated style, and despite not finding a blockbuster theatrical audience, has become both a cult and family favorite for those looking for a film with a serious message and that still packs prime entertainment value. Released…
The film i’ve been looking forward to all year, hoping and praying that The Force Awakens can be quickly forgotten, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is finally here. Directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) the story takes place before that of the first Star Wars movie made way back in 1977. The empire is…
