Tag Archives: movie review

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Indie Films, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Comedy (2012) 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.”

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The film stars Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric fame. Comedy partner Eric Wareheim co-stars, and their presence in the film in one instance is Continue reading The Comedy (2012) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Indie Films, Like It, Short Films

Heir (2015) Short Film Review

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.

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The short quickly deviates from reality, surreal imagery and special effects work becoming Continue reading Heir (2015) Short Film Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words)

Keanu (2016) Movie Review

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.

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The lion’s share of comedy in Keanu derives from Continue reading Keanu (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Indie Films, Like It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words), Romance

Wedding Doll (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.

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What is immediately evident with Wedding Doll is the Continue reading Wedding Doll (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Indie Films, Love It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words)

Age of Cannibals (Zeit der Kannibalen) (2014) 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.

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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 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Indie Films, Love It

Cosmos (2015) 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.

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Strange visual motifs dominate the film. Bugs crawl over food, hanged animals appear intermittently, one character is Continue reading Cosmos (2015) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Indie Films, Love It

The Dark Horse (2016) 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.

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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 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words)

Demolition (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.

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After writing the company several lengthy and personal letters, a customer service worker (Naomi Watts) Continue reading Demolition (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review

The first person POV film Hardcore Henry follows the eponymous character (here, the camera is a character) after an unexplained accident renders him maimed. Given cybernetic enhancements to essentially his entire body in a series of jump cuts, Henry must fight to save the wife (Haley Bennett) he doesn’t remember from the corporation that provided the parts that built him.

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For the most part, it is your basic action movie plot: the untethered yet reluctant hero, the damsel in distress, the rugged in-the-know guru (or about a dozen of them), and the clearly immoral villain.

The gimmick, then, is the cinematographic choices. The real question, then, is: Is this a gimmick film? Continue reading Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review

In Eye in the Sky, a joint security task force between the UK, the U.S., and Kenya plan a combined drone and ground strike on a meeting of high-level Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi. When the operation starts breaking down, the scenario boils down to a political debate over whether or not to utilize a drone strike to take down the targets.

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The film attempts topical commentary inside the drama-thriller framework it is working with. What works most readily is Continue reading Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review →