Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more
Battle of the Sexes, in name and historical story, appears to be a feminist film, and in a sense it is. Mostly, though, it is merely a safe movie about a feminist figure.
The crux of the film is the tennis match between self-proclaimed chauvinist Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) and #1 women’s tennis player Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), but the action begins with Continue reading Battle of the Sexes (2017) Movie Review
All of Brad’s (Ben Stiller) friends from college went on to do great things. Craig (Michael Sheen) has created a television career out of his time working in the White House. Billy (Jemaine Clement) sold his company and retired by 40. Jason (Luke Wilson) manages a hedge fund. Nick (Mike White, who also directs) is living it up the Los Angeles way as a Hollywood director. Brad, well…he runs a non-profit.
Now that Brad’s son Troy (Austin Abrams) is looking forward to college, Brad is faced with Continue reading Brad’s Status (2017) Movie Review
This review of Gaspar Noe’s I Stand Alone is part of the New French Extremity Retrospective series.
Rage is a palpable force in I Stand Alone, the first feature film from Gaspar Noe. It is a rage against French society. Philippe Nahon’s The Butcher displaces this rage, his inner monologue tearing apart anyone in his path. What results is a protagonist that comes off as sexist, racist, homophobic, and overall nihilistic.
But The Butcher is also a sad man. All he wants is to Continue reading I Stand Alone (1998) Movie Review
This review of Catherine Breillat’s Romance is part of the New French Extremity Retrospective series.
“You don’t deserve my faithfulness”
The complicated sexuality of Romance is problematic. Not entirely so, as the film explores a side of sexuality that is often left unexplored. But the screenplay reduces sexual philosophy to a binary matter. Even when the shoe is on the opposite foot, entering the perspective of Continue reading Romance (1999) Movie Review
“The bourgeoisie has never hesitated to kill its children”
As drenched in infamy as it is, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film Salo remains a dedicated feature of film criticism, with articles written to this day about the film’s place in the canon of cinema.
Quite possibly the most debauched film in history, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, is a narrative of Continue reading Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) Movie Review
First They Killed My Father opens in the most blatant, contrived way possible: with a montage of political heads that include Richard Nixon discussing broken foreign relations while the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil” plays over the top.
What this montage does is set the period and the atmosphere. It is 1975; we are in Cambodia at the onset of the Khmer Rouge. The anti-Western mindset used as a means of oppression, director Angelina Jolie nevertheless reminds us that Continue reading First They Killed My Father (2017) Movie Review
American Assassin opens on Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien), our handsome action hero, proposing to his girlfriend (Charlotte Vega) on a beach in Spain. Because we need Rapp to become a grizzled action hero with a chip on his shoulder, decked out in a scraggly beard so that we know he’s in grief, his girlfriend has to die in a random act of violence.
Enter the CIA in the form of the dueling ideologies of Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) and Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). They recruit Rapp in an elite anti-terrorism unit, a unit so cutthroat that it Continue reading American Assassin (2017) Movie Review
In the New York Post review of Darren Aronofsky’s new feature film Mother!, critic Sara Stewart calls the film “a Rorschach test of a movie to interpret however you like.” Not only is this statement accurate, but it is the fatal flaw that sinks this unwieldy monster of a film.
There is so much to unpack with Mother! that it becomes not a question of “what?” but a question of Continue reading Mother! (2017) Movie Review
In Kodachrome, Matt Ryder (Jason Sudeikis) is an arrogant, childish talent agent for musicians. When he loses one of his premiere acts, he finds himself on the verge of losing his job. Lying his way through a conversation with his boss, he buys himself a week to book a major up-and-coming act.
He can get a meeting with this act in Chicago, but only if he accompanies his dying, irate, and estranged father Ben (Ed Harris) to Continue reading Kodachrome (2017) Movie Review (TIFF 2017)
We first see Jocasta (Silvana Mangano) giving birth to Oedipus, from afar as if we are voyeur’s looking in on a sex act (a fitting introduction given the Freudian psychological product of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex). Next, we see her in a pleasing closeup. As her baby nurses from her, her smiling face recedes into a blank look that borders on concern, before her delight returns. Only, this delight seems lessened. Her face looks as though she has seen something, an omen of some kind.
Of course, the dramatic irony inherent in this opening is intentional. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini imbues the tonal undercurrent of the film with Continue reading Oedipus Rex (1967) Movie Review
CineFiles Movie Reviews 