Movies I liked but likely won’t watch again. Something was off that I wish had been done differently.
Race is the biopic of Olympic athlete Jesse Owens. The film follows Owens (Stephan James) as he tackles adversity in 1930s America and Germany. It also explores the relationship between Owens and his down-and-out coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis).
What it boils down to is that this film is a Continue reading Race (2016) Movie Review
In Hail Caesar!, the latest from the Coen Brothers, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is an actor during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He is introduced on-screen in a meta framing—a screening within a screening—portraying a Roman leader in a historical epic a la Spartacus. During filming of this movie, Whitlock is drugged and kidnapped.
Hail Caesar! is the Coen Brothers’ love letter to classical Hollywood cinema. The standard genres of the period are represented: Westerns, historical epics, Broadway musical adaptations, bourgeois romance, etc.
The structural issue of this love letter is that Continue reading Hail Caesar! (2016) Movie Review
Over, the short film from director Jorn Threlfall, begins quietly. We get static long shots of a suburban street. At 11:45 pm. Then at 7:30 pm. The first two minutes are silence, save for ambient noise, as we see a couple park their car and cross the street, where they see a letter and a bouquet of flowers near the median. They speculate that someone has died there.
The story soon becomes clear. In reverse chronological order, we get to see Continue reading Over (2015) Short Film Review
Anomalisa begins on chatter over a black screen. This chatter is clearly multiple people, but the voices are distinctly similar to each other. This fades in on a lush cloudscape with an airplane emerging out of the grey. Inside the plane is Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a man famous for writing a book about good customer service.
Michael lives in a world of isolation. On a trip to give a self-help speech, he is completely Continue reading Anomalisa (2015) Movie Review
Note: I’ve tried to make this review as spoiler free as possible. That said, one person’s reaction is another person’s spoiler. I can’t make this 100% devoid of spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
Star Wars – The Force Awakens is directed by J.J. Abrams, and it is the first new Star Wars film in 10 years. Easily the most anticipated movie of the year, The Force Awakens could have been the biggest disappointment since, well, The Phantom Menace. Thankfully, this is not the case.
This part is unavoidable, but it must be mentioned. Continue reading Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015) Movie Review
Aufdruck (stylized AUFDRUCK or LABEL) is a short film from independent filmmaker Jaschar L Marktanner. It is a film shot in elegant black and white that features a plunking piano score, a score which plods along with the conversation of two women (Mary Krasnoperova and Kira Mathis) at a restaurant.
At first glance, the film appears to be Continue reading AUFDRUCK (LABEL) Short Film Review
Cold Deck opens with a jazzy soundtrack and a warmly-lit montage of poker tables being played. The film zooms in on one particular table, where the players engage in emasculating ball-busting, each jab met with the same uproarious laughter.
One player, Bobby (Stefano Gallo), loses out to the clubs owner, Chips (Paul Sorvino), who takes sympathy on him and lends him some cash.
Bobby works in a factory, but his conversations are all on gambling. It is his lifestyle. Strapped for cash, barely able to Continue reading Cold Deck (2015) Movie Review
Brooklyn is a film starring Saoirse Ronan as a young Irish emigre, Eilis, who moves to New York in the early 1950s to find work, leaving behind a mother and sister as a result. In Brooklyn, she stays at a boarding house with four other women of differing personality, works at a department store (but takes night classes to become a bookkeeper), and falls for a young Italian man named Tony (Emory Cohen).
The film makes a marked transition from Eilis’s process of immigration and settling into her new world to her Continue reading Brooklyn (2015) Movie Review
The main diegesis of Goodnight Mommy begins with two twin brothers being children. They play tag in a corn field and frolic through the woods. They cautiously enter through a dark void of a passageway, referring back to the viewers themselves, who are choosing to do the same by watching this film.
The film opens with an immediate sense of stillness. But there is Continue reading Goodnight Mommy (2015) Movie Review
Charlie (Josephine Japy) lives in a household demarcated by fighting parents. She hears her mother sob at night. At school, she becomes quietly fascinated by new student Sarah (Lou de Laage). Sarah is more impulsive, more charismatic than Charlie. They are foils, and yet their chemistry is instantaneous.
Their relationship grows when they vacation together, but it grows toward the realm of the complicated. Lines are grayed. And all the while, Continue reading Respire (Breathe) (2015) Movie Review
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