Category Archives: Drama

Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more

The Iron Claw (2023) Movie Review

Sean Durkin’s films are about haunted people. In The Nest, the English manor the characters move to becomes a haunting symbol of their marriage crumbling down around them in the present. The protagonist of Martha Marcy May Marlene is haunted by her traumatizing past in a cult. The characters of the Von Erich brothers in The Iron Claw are haunted by their futures.

The reason for this forward-looking anxiety is the brothers’ parents. Their father, Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), owns the Dallas-based wrestling league the WCCW, and he only really expresses pride and love for his sons when they Continue reading The Iron Claw (2023) Movie Review

All of Us Strangers (2023) Movie Review

Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers is a story about a haunted man, which becomes a film about a (potentially more literal) haunting. The film’s main preoccupation is with conversations which never happen. Adam (Andrew Scott), an aspiring screenwriter, is using the script format to try and crack into his inner visions of his deceased parents. Hypothetical conversations play out on screen, where Adam divulges to his parents things he never had the chance to while they were alive. His mum and dad (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear younger than Adam; they are the last version of them he can remember, as they died in a car crash when he was still a boy.

These dialogues are the heart of the film, despite a great performance by Paul Mescal that props up the film’s other half: a budding romance between two lonely men who are living in an almost entirely empty high rise. As the film progresses, the Continue reading All of Us Strangers (2023) Movie Review

Godzilla Minus One (2023) Movie Review

I am not a historian. It doesn’t take a historian, though, to understand that the 1954 film Godzilla is about the devastating possibilities of human-made destruction that was realized in the wake of World War II. What we are capable of, as a species, was demonstrated in many different ways in those years, and Godzilla bottles the anxieties surrounding our own extinction into a distinct (and now very recognizable) figure. Ishirō Honda’s film is most remembered for introducing kaiju monsters to the mainstream, but it is as much a film about the human characters on the ground who must deal with what is towering over them as it is about Godzilla.

What has been lost in the Americanized iterations of the Godzilla IP is not so much this human focus (there are plenty of human characters, I just couldn’t tell you any of their names). What is lost is the Continue reading Godzilla Minus One (2023) Movie Review

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) Movie Review

What makes a monster? It’s a question we can consider from two perspectives (two of many possible). The first is those primordial things that make up evil: those pieces of the human condition that must be foreclosed such that a person can do monstrous things. The second involves an act of creation. What is it within our civilized society that seeks to identify and call out the bad of humankind? Who crafts the narratives that cast some as villains and others as victims, and through what contexts are these narratives codified and/or agreed upon? At least…agreed upon enough that stories with monsters become tropes that are legible to us, or agreed upon enough that guilty verdicts can be reached in homicide cases.

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall presents us with a contained incident (the eponymous fall) and a proceeding attempt by many parties to Continue reading Anatomy of a Fall (2023) Movie Review

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — River, Femme, #Manhole

River, #Manhole and Femme are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


River

Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was a delightfully quirky experiment with time travel tropes. The film was rough and tumble from a visual standpoint, but its charm withstood its Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — River, Femme, #Manhole

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Sometimes I Think About Dying, Hippo

Sometimes I Think About Dying and Hippo are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


Sometimes I Think About Dying

Fran (Daisy Ridley) leaves her office job each day, microwaves herself a dinner, and sits alone on her couch. Occasionally, during these quiet moments, she does what the film’s title suggests, roving through fantasies of death in her mind. Then she returns to Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Sometimes I Think About Dying, Hippo

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Satan Wants You, Devils

Satan Wants You and Devils are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


Devils

Kim Jae-hoon’s Devils is a crime thriller with a premise similar to that of a body swap movie. Police detective Jae-hwan (Oh Dae-hwan) disappears for a month after pursuing a sadistic serial killer (Jang Dong-yoon), only for both the cop and the killer to resurface unexpectedly. Jae-hwan wakes in a hospital to find himself Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Satan Wants You, Devils

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Hundreds of Beavers, Aporia, Emptiness

Aporia, Hundreds of Beavers, and Emptiness are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


Aporia

A year after Sophie’s (Judy Greer) husband dies, her daughter remains despondent. She is truant from school, failing classes, and she wants nothing to do with her friends or mother. When her late husband’s best friend (Payman Maadi) shows her a time machine he’s been building, Sophie decides to Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Hundreds of Beavers, Aporia, Emptiness

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — With Love and a Major Organ, A Disturbance in the Force

With Love and a Major Organ and A Disturbance in the Force are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


With Love and A Major Organ

Annabelle (Anna Maguire) is an aspiring painter working at a customer service call center who avoids Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — With Love and a Major Organ, A Disturbance in the Force

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Blackout, Stay Online and Vincent Must Die

Blackout, Stay Online, and Vincent Must Die are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.


Stay Online

Eva Strelinkova’s Stay Online is a Screenlife film that follows Katya (Yelyzaveta Zaitseva), a woman who is Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Blackout, Stay Online and Vincent Must Die