At the age of three, Owen Suskind “disappears.” He changes: awake all night, speaking in gibberish, a loss of motor function, an inability to understand what people are saying. Diagnosed with autism, Owen’s life changes forever.
But a love for animated movies, particularly those of the Disney Corporation, allows Owen an outlet from which he can Continue reading Life, Animated (2016) Movie Review
Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) travels from food joint to food joint trying to sell a five-spindle milkshake mixer. No one bites, but as he sits defeated at these drive-in restaurants, he notices a trend. A trend of slowness, inaccuracy.
When a small, bustling outfit out of San Bernadino named McDonald’s orders an inexplicable eight mixers for one location, Kroc is Continue reading The Founder (2016) Movie Review
Jesuit priest Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson), amid a 17th century Japanese mission environment of torture and persecution, reportedly apostatizes the Christian faith to prevent more Japanese converts from being harmed.
Two young priests who were raised into the faith under the tutelage of Ferreira, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garupe (Adam Driver), decide to venture to Japan to find Ferreira and an explanation.
When Rodrigues and Garupe land on the Japanese shore, it becomes clear that their resolve may not be enough for what they are up against. In a delightfully simple move, Scorsese shows the two Portuguese priests with Continue reading Silence (2016) Movie Review
Patriots Day, the other 2016 film from director Peter Berg that stars Mark Wahlberg, is a big question mark of a film. It is not a question mark in terms of why it was made or how it was put together, but in how to approach it from a viewer’s perspective.
The film is a dramatic depiction of the Continue reading Patriots Day (2016) Movie Review
There is something cautionary about a film that opens with a scene that outlines a superficial context by having every line of dialogue out of the characters’ mouths point to the obvious mores of the day, to the point where a character has to exclaim what year it is to highlight the already obvious irony of their immediate situation.
It is this retrograde rose-tinting of history that plagues Hidden Figures. Morality films such as these often fall into this pitfall, where characters are hyper aware of their situation as if they themselves are looking back as we are. The film is designed around Continue reading Hidden Figures (2016) Movie Review
In New York, 1944, a wealthy socialite named Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) takes a fancy to opera singing. With her husband’s (Hugh Grant) aid, she reunites with an old vocal coach (David Haig) and hires a young pianist (Simon Helberg). To the pianist’s dismay, his first rehearsal with Florence yields the revelation of her sheer inability to carry a tune.
This initial rehearsal scene is a Continue reading Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) Movie Review
Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is rigid, resolute, decisive, cynical, cantankerous, embittered, emboldened, unfriendly. But mostly he is a man of simple means who wants things just to his liking. He doesn’t like people driving through his neighborhood, as it is strictly forbidden. He argues over the coupon price of a bouquet of flowers that he leaves for his deceased wife. And, when he loses his job of 43 years to a pair of 20-somethings, he decides to hang himself from his living room ceiling.
Except, each time he tries, he is interrupted by his new neighbors: a family who means well in spite of pushing all of Ove’s buttons.
The narrative of an elderly man hardened over the grief for Continue reading A Man Called Ove (2016) Movie Review
In a rural forest, the snap of a rifle shot breaks the quaint silence. Two brothers (Fidel Badran and Jad Badran) stand over their unseen prey, taking a beat before they go about covering their tracks so their father does not realize what they have done with his hunting rifle.
The Rifle, The Jackal, The Wolf and The Boy is the familiar feeling of childhood guilt ratcheted up to grim stakes. The narrative itself is almost absurdly simplistic, and the film chooses to rely instead on Continue reading The Rifle, The Jackal, The Wolf and The Boy (2016) Short Film Review
“Luna (Lali Ayguade) and Diego (Nicolas Ricchini) are the parking lot security guards. Diego does the night shift, and Luna works by day.” This is the IMDb description for Juanjo Gimenez Pena’s short film Timecode. It is terse and unassuming, seemingly mundane. Yet the CCTV cameras in the lot, when set to secret timecodes, tell a different story.
There is a heartening simplicity to Timecode. Marked by its levity and brevity, the short film follows Luna in her isolating Continue reading Timecode (2016) Short Film Review
Seven years after an unknown “incident,” one man (Oriol Pia) lives in a world of isolation. Graffiti is quiet in this regard. Indeed, no words are spoken. The most we get out of Pia verbally is him howling in a call-response fashion with his dog.
Graffiti has a familiar feel to other post-apocalyptic stories, most overtly Continue reading Graffiti (2016) Short Film Review
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