Two couples move in to a quaint duplex and, coincidentally, both are expecting. Kate and Justin (Clemence Poesy and Stephen Campbell Moore) are unassuming and innocently critical. Theresa and Jon (Laura Birn and David Morrissey) are welcoming and intolerably tidy. Their lives initially appear like mirrors with only the slightest light refracted, but the light starts to bend more and more when they sit down for dinner together. And this light can only hope to continue bending away from center as the film progresses.
The premise of Captain America: Civil War is exactly what it sounds like: a legislation called the Sokovia Accords will put restrictions on the power of superheroes, and it threatens to tear the Avengers in two. Divided, faction leaders Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) face off in a heated battle for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The opening shots of Entertainment are largely static. The Comedian (Gregg Turkington, essentially playing in this film a fictionalized version of himself and his comedic alter-ego Neil Hamburger), stands in an airplane fuselage, looking down. He watches as a clown, Eddie the Opener (Tye Sheridan), prepares for a set at a prison. He looks on dour-faced as the clown “wows” the crowd of prisoners by simply bouncing a ball and clapping his hands.
The first spoken dialogue in the film comes from a tour operator who encourages The Comedian and others to “by all means, go ahead and wander.” Yet the film does the opposite. Continue reading Entertainment (2015) Movie Review→
Rick Alverson’s The Comedy is not a comedy. It is an anti-comedy. A satire of a self-destructive generation gazing on their own broken world. The film opens on a group of people, mostly slightly overweight men, drinking and dancing, spitting beer and stripping nude. This is a commonplace setting for this group of “friends.”
A father (Robert Nolan) takes his son to spend a day with an old college friend (Bill Oberst Jr.), but the activities they engage in are far more insidious than simply “gone fishing.” The father, on top of the strange goings-on in his friend’s home, experiences a stigmata-like wound that oozes a sticky pus.
After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Rell (Jordan Peele, also co-writer) comes across cute kitten Keanu, who proves to be the saving grace from his post-breakup blues.
Rell gets unnaturally attached to Keanu, to the point that when the cat is kidnapped (dare I say cat-napped?) by gangster outfit the 17th St. Blips, he and cousin Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) must infiltrate the gang and literally save the cat.
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.
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.
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.
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→
CineFiles Movie Reviews 