Movies I liked but likely won’t watch again. Something was off that I wish had been done differently.
At the beginning of the court room drama Denial, Rachel Weisz’ embodiment of Deborah Lipstadt states to a class the four assertions that Holocaust deniers posit. The killings were not systematic. The number of deaths were exaggerated. Auschwitz was not built with extermination in mind. Therefore, the Holocaust is a myth.
Enter David Irving (Timothy Spall), an outspoken Holocaust denier. When Irving lays out a defamation suit against Lipstadt, she must Continue reading Denial (2016) Movie Review
Birthday, the narrative short film from director Chris King, feels stylistically as a documentary. This adds to its weight. In a tightly framed set of reverses, we are privy to a grin-filled conversation between two people over Skype. One, a marine (Chris Gouchoe) 43 days away from the end of his tour. The other, his schoolteacher wife (Mandy Moody) anxiously awaiting his return.
The next three minutes are told in montage over what is perhaps an overly sentimental string score. We see the soldier step on a landmine. We see his wife’s response. We see his slow, grueling recovery.
He returns home on his birthday. As he enters the threshold and surveys the home, as if it is Continue reading Birthday (2016) Short Film Review
A recent early review of Ouija: Origin of Evil—the unasked for sequel to 2014’s Ouija—by the A.V. Club is entitled “Ouija: Origin of Evil is much better than it needs to be.” Indeed, critic Katie Rife describes director Mike Flanagan’s (Oculus, Hush) film as “more thoughtful and more meticulously crafted than it needs to be.”
The remainder of the review is more conventional, about what one would expect from a horror movie review. What is most troubling about this review is Continue reading Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) Movie Review
Christopher Guest has made a career out of droll, talking-head mockumentary films that satirize naive, self-centered hopefuls in one career or another. While the formula has certainly worked for Guest in the past, there is a precipitous threshold over which the deadpan ensemble piece becomes reductive.
Mascots is Best in Show with people in costumes. The ensemble of eccentric sports mascots travel to the annual mascot competition to compete for the Golden Fluffy award. Many of Guest’s go-to players return: Continue reading Mascots (2016) Movie Review
Nate Parker’s directorial debut has been steeped in conversation since its premiere at Sundance. First it was a conversation of high praise: standing ovations and the timely antidote to #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Then, it became a conversation of divisive controversy involving the personal life of the director himself. What is most important in this roller coaster conversation should be the film itself. So let’s talk about that.
Nat Turner (Parker) is a slave in 19th century Virginia. The film, however, is more readily powerful when it Continue reading The Birth of a Nation (2016) Movie Review
Rachel (Emily Blunt) has an overactive imagination, living vicariously in her mind through the fantasy lives of strangers that she sees from her daily train commute. In particular, she is fascinated by a couple whose true lives are far less glamorous than the sex appeal that is seen as a blip on the passing train.
The Girl on the Train is a mystery of sorts, but it is more akin to Continue reading The Girl on the Train (2016) Movie Review
The preamble to Tim Burton’s latest, a fantasy novel adaptation, introduces a multi-faceted allegorical fable that mixes grief, childhood imagination, and Holocaust fears into a hideaway fantasy realm. Miss Peregrine’s (Eva Green) children’s home remains perpetually in September 3, 1943, the day when a German air raid bombed the building out.
Jake (Asa Butterfield), a lonely boy in his own right, travels to find the home (in 2016) following the death of his grandfather (Terence Stamp), a former resident of the home. Through way of the cavernous entrance into a Continue reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Movie Review
Sully is literally marred by explosions. They are the nightmares of the title character—pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks), who successfully landed a crashing plane into the Hudson River in 2009—a streaking jet plane striking into Times Square. These are the volatile internal demons of an outwardly calm man.
Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial outing works on two levels of conflict. There is this internal struggle, and there is the closed-door politics of the man’s otherwise heroic actions. The divide between the two, stylistically, is two different movies. It is arguably more effective to Continue reading Sully (2016) Movie Review
“Lo,” the first message ever sent across the internet. “Lo” as in “Log” without the g, as the computer sending the message crashed before the message could be completed. This is the beautiful irony of the internet that director Werner Herzog tries to capture in his new documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. The inception of the world wide web was at one point a “revolution” that was about to irrevocably change the course of the modern world, and it is at another point an inception that is as archaic-sounding as a recovered fossil.
Video games that map molecules, cars that drive themselves, online class rosters that academically blow Stanford students out of the water. The internet is a mesmerizing world of possibilities that we all take for granted every day. The problem with this premise is that Continue reading Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Movie Review
John Link (Mel Gibson) is a sober ex-con who scrawls tattoos on upper thighs out of his trailer in the California desert. When his long-disappeared daughter suddenly re-enters his life with a criminal past trailing her, he must take drastic actions to protect her.
Blood Father does not have a stellar narrative. It has a crass script with little nuance. But it is Continue reading Blood Father (2016) Movie Review
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