The weekend of 4/29/2016 sees three new wide releases: Keanu, Mother’s Day, and Ratchet & Clank. The first is the big screen debut of Key & Peele stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as leads. The second is the next film in the Garry Marshall-verse. And the third is a video game adaptation. Let’s get into it.
Mother’s Day has the widest release of the three (3,035 according to Box Office Mojo), but Marshall’s box office record is Continue reading Weekend Box Office Predictions: 4/29 – 5/1
In Green Room, a group of young and conceited punk rockers travel to one last unscheduled gig after their tour bottoms out. The White Supremacist punk scene of the club proves to be more shady than it first appears. The mosh pit is slowed to a balletic chaos as they perform. The atmosphere of the audience is unforgiving. And the green room backstage is an environment of violent undoing.
The film, like the music it portrays, is unrefined, but it is a purposefully stylized unrefined. The low key lighting and grimy aesthetic is what has become “torture porn chic.”
What writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, whose 2013 microbudget indie thriller Blue Ruin received critical success, does differently than torture porn is deliver a Continue reading Green Room (2016) Movie Review
Note: This is an in-depth analysis of the 2009 film Antichrist, and, as such, there will be plenty of spoilers for the film. Additionally, the film being discussed here is extremely graphic in nature, and some of these graphic moments are explored in this article. As such, reader discretion is advised.
Note: This is a multi-page article. The links to the subsequent pages often get hidden near the bottom of the page, so just know that the article does not end at the bottom of this page. It is a four-page article.
Lars von Trier’s 2009 film Antichrist might be the single most divisive movie I’ve come across, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given Continue reading The Philosophy of Antichrist: Expulsion from Eden
This weekend sees just one wide domestic release: The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the sequel to the critically middling but financially successful Snow White and the Huntsman. This first installment won its opening weekend bout with a healthy $56.2 million, but I have a feeling this is the sequel no one asked for. With tepid reviews and healthy runs from films already in theaters, I don’t see The Huntsman taking the top spot in its opening weekend.
Instead, we will likely see Continue reading Weekend Box Office Predictions: 4/22/2016
In The Jungle Book, the live action adaptation of the famous Disney retelling, a boy (Neel Sethi) raised by wolves is put in danger by his own humanity, as the bloodthirsty Bengal tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) vows to kill the child.
CG burdens many films, which become over-dependent on them for spectacle’s sake. In the case of this film, the Continue reading The Jungle Book (2016) Movie Review
Hagit (Moran Rosenblatt) works as a packager in a struggling toilet paper factory. Suffering from a cognitive disability, she lives with her mother Sara (Assi Levy), who sacrifices various aspects of her life in order to be there for her daughter.
What is immediately evident with Wedding Doll is the Continue reading Wedding Doll (2016) Movie Review
Age of Cannibals follows two German business consultants on a business trip in Lagos, Nigeria. While moving about their hotel, they try to convince a businessman to move his resources from India to Pakistan, deal with a new, young co-worker, and brashly handle cultural differences.
Stylistically, the films is fairly cut and dry. There is little out of the ordinary, save for Continue reading Age of Cannibals (Zeit der Kannibalen) (2014) Movie Review
In Cosmos, the final film from director Andrzej Zulawski, failing law student Witold (Jonathan Genet) takes a vacation in a renter’s home. Disillusioned, he abandons his studies to pursue writing a novel that mirrors his time at the house. But his time in the house proves to be psychologically taxing.
Strange visual motifs dominate the film. Bugs crawl over food, hanged animals appear intermittently, one character is Continue reading Cosmos (2015) Movie Review
Genesis (Cliff Curtis), a severely bipolar man, walks through the rain into a game shop after escaping from an institution. He begins playing a game of chess with himself, mumbling all of the possible moves to himself.
The savant is later released into the care of his brother, who has social troubles of his own that leaves little time to accommodate Genesis. Genesis finds an old friend who runs a chess club, and he strives to Continue reading The Dark Horse (2016) Movie Review
When his wife dies in a car accident, New York white collar type Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) falls into an erratic depression. At the hospital, after hearing of his wife’s ill fate, Davis uses a vending machine, and gets hung up when the machine disallows him his peanut M&Ms.
After writing the company several lengthy and personal letters, a customer service worker (Naomi Watts) Continue reading Demolition (2016) Movie Review
