Tag Archives: A24

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Movie Review

August 13, 2022 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Bodies Bodies Bodies, on its surface, is a movie I should instantly fall in love with. It is a light horror comedy riff on the whodunit with a cast so stacked with great young talent that I almost couldn’t believe it when it was announced. Drop the cherry on top that it is an A24 picture, and my fears that this was a half-thought-out satire churned out as a genre programmer went out the window.

Churned out genre programmer Bodies Bodies Bodies is not. As for the satire, I must admit I was unimpressed. Early buzz from critics and audiences alike is Continue reading Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Men (2022) Movie Review

May 21, 2022 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

I have a distinct feeling that Alex Garland planted things in Men, the writer-director’s new film starring Jessie Buckley and a bevy of Rory Kinnears, which I have not entirely picked up on. Namely, allusions to religion and mythology which fly outside my knowledge structures. Yet what I did understand about Men, what was left after those allusions are stripped away and narrative and theme remain, was altogether so blunt and superficial that I in moments thought I was watching a parody of a specific breed of arthouse film. A parody of the exact film Men is.

This is not a case of I didn’t understand the film, therefore I don’t like it. On the contrary, Continue reading Men (2022) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Souvenir (2019) Movie Review

August 8, 2019 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Honor Swinton Byrne is phenomenal in The Souvenir. The film from Joanna Hogg presents a coming of age story for Swinton Byrne’s Julie, who is in the process of making a feature for film school. If you don’t recognize Swinton Byrne’s talent by this late juncture of the film, then you will see it when she looks directly at you, through the camera, following filming a take of her own. It is a shot that really shouldn’t be this powerful. It is too reflexive, too direct. But Swinton Byrne carries the weight of the film that has played out before her, and she puts that weight on you when she goes direct-to-camera.

Julie’s relationship to the audience may be as fraught as her romantic relationship with Anthony (Tom Burke) is. For one, it becomes increasingly hard for Continue reading The Souvenir (2019) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Midsommar (2019) Movie Review

July 8, 2019 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

Ari Aster does not care if you’re comfortable. If his first two films are any indication, it appears that he prefers the opposite. With his debut, Hereditary, Aster approached grief with a macabre twist that winds up making the weight of grief seem feathery by comparison.

With Midsommar, Aster approaches grief with a macabre twist that winds up making the weight of grief seem…am I repeating myself?

Aster’s two films take staid, empty, and largely silent burdens and makes them bleed into

Continue reading Midsommar (2019) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) Movie Review

August 29, 2018 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

It is 1977. Croydon, London. Enn (Alex Sharp) and his two punk friends sneak into a club and subsequently search for the after party they weren’t invited to. Instead, they stumble upon a much different party. A much stranger party. Men and women, clad in leather suits that accent their genitals, mill about. People in blue body suits dance robotically. People in yellow body suits enjoy their individuality and physical form.

It’s all a bit, dare I say, alien.

It isn’t hard to put that together when Enn falls in with one of the yellow-suited lot. Zan (Elle Fanning) makes reference again and again to Continue reading How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Indie Films, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Eighth Grade (2018) Movie Review

July 31, 2018 Alex Brannan 1 Comment

Bo Burnham is a stand-up comic with a distinct style. Semi-musical, semi-poetic, always frantic and unpausing, he skewers media and self-reflexively dissects the public perception of artistry. “Art is dead,” he sings in one song. “Some people think you’re funny / how do we get those people’s money?” His seemingly cynical take on the entertainment industry is curbed by his indictment of self. He implicates himself—“My drug’s attention / I am an addict / but I get paid to indulge in my habit”—in order to subvert the creator-as-god mentality.

Some of the conversation around Eighth Grade, Burnham’s debut as a feature film director, is about the Continue reading Eighth Grade (2018) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Hereditary (2018) Movie Review

June 8, 2018 Alex Brannan 1 Comment

There are some horror movies that make you jump. There are some that make you squirm. There are the rare ones that raise questions about the human condition. And there are the few horror movies that do all three and manage to conjure images that stick unshaken in your head long after you’ve left the theater. Hereditary is of this latter breed.

To be fair, Hereditary does some of these things much more effectively than others. Namely, the questions it raises about the nature of grief and the things we do or do not say about tragedy fall by the wayside when Continue reading Hereditary (2018) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

It Comes At Night (2017) Movie Review

June 8, 2017 Alex Brannan Leave a comment

It Comes At Night is a terse family drama disguising itself as a horror film. Still, it remains the scariest filmgoing experience of 2017 thus far.

The film takes place in an idyllic cabin hideaway in the woods. It is the sort of place that you would run off to on a lazy Summer weekend. But this house also has wood boarding up its windows. It has a pair of doors—one prominently red—locking itself off from the outside world.

This is no vacation. It is survival.

This contrast that director Trey Edward Shults plays with is crucial to the thematic understanding of It Comes At Night. In the film, a family of three have just buried Continue reading It Comes At Night (2017) Movie Review →