The discolored and dingy tile grout at the bottom of a swimming pool and the imagery effect of rippling water seen under the surface bending the images above perspective starkly symbolize the many warped dimensions of Liquid Truth. The truth in the title is as slippery as the water in director Caroline Jabor’s simmering social commentary. The film may be foreign from Brazil, but it typifies all too many social media ills that would explode in a parallel fashion here in this country.
Read MoreSimon Curtis’ Goodbye Christopher Robin is a cinematic quilt collecting experiences from many different narrative themes. A few patches carry the pattern of biographical films, chronicling life’s highlights and lowlights within a well-to-do family and their hired caretaker. Others carry the created images of a writer’s world-building legend. The threads binding those quilt pieces are a woven blend of the barbed wire of post-traumatic stress disorder and the smoothly silken cords of childhood whimsy. The experience of snuggling up with the Goodbye Christopher Robin blanket of testimony and memories is as affectingly dramatic as it is comfortably warm.
Read MoreFor a while now, I have long wondered how someone could bottle that signature Pixar-level lightness for dramatic heft and pour it into a live-action piece with the same welcome whimsy. Pixar's animated feature films and shorts consistently have a special way with conveying humor within the most difficult emotions I might have found the closest attempt yet in Chad Hamilton’s lovely short film Not Yet.
Read MoreThe character of James in Message Received, played by David Chin, is a married man whose extramarital activities has been discovered by a mystery person. His actions that follow in the taut 11-minute short demonstrate how desperation can make that downward cycle even more steep and slippery. Things get worse instead of better and he has no one to blame but himself.
Read MoreThe filmmakers promised Loving Vincent to be nothing you’ve ever seen put to film and they were not lying. The sheer artistry is miraculous where even folded shirts look as dramatic as emoting faces. To call the biographical drama a work of art and astonishing technical achievement would be shameless understatements. The best part of all is the massive wellspring of creativity was thankfully applied to an engaged narrative worthy of the artistry and the legend cast by Vincent Van Gogh
Read MoreChasing the Blues is a dark comedy through and through. Director Scott Smith and his co-writer Kevin Guifoile crafted an engaging yarn of hijinks and hilarity. Their narrative might feel like something out of a Coen brothers rough draft, but this film sides with a far less gonzo approach that suits its shrewder stature. Like the musical genre at its core, patient storytelling is at the forefront. Could it use a stiffer punch or two? Maybe, but then it wouldn’t be the blue and not everything has to be shock cinema. Waiting for the payoff in this tidy 77-minute film is an easy and worthwhile short hike to climb.
Read MoreCan you learn about a popular band by listening to their B-sides instead of their greatest hits? Can you get a sense of the brilliance within a writer from their early drafts and not their published masterpieces? Can you spot the traits of a future Hall of Fame sports legend solely by their work in college or the minor leagues before the professional ranks? The answer to each is quite likely the same: sometimes, but not always. Tally one in the sometimes column for Reginald Hudlin’s Marshall and its biographical podium choice.
Read MoreThe crucial emotional response The Florida Project demands of its viewers is empathy. If you can’t find that, if you turn your nose, close your eyes, and refuse to accept that this kind of American lifestyle exists, you are missing the hard truths, the teachable moments, and the larger points being presented. onvenient Hollywood endings don’t exist in the real life Baker’s film examines. Applaud a film that dares to push that stark reality.
Read MoreEven from a different generation than the present day, you can’t get more Hollywood than Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Both are emeritus stars of Tinseltown royalty on multiple levels, respected and celebrated as award-winning performers, icons of style, sex symbols, and vigilant political personas off-screen. To see the two of them together again, for the fifth time and the first time in 38 years in Our Souls at Night, is a revitalizing treat unto itself, but to see their shared film be staunchly non-Hollywood in stature is even more refreshing.
Read MoreBy design and in the name of essential effectiveness, a good short film has to cut to the chase. Their tricks of cinematic shorthand in the exposition department are what make them entertaining. When the micro-budgeted Loyalty and Betrayal opens on the imagery of a man on his bedroom floor putting a gun to his forehead, a chase has certainly been cut. Writer/director Jonathan Vargas grabs us right there and locks our gaze.
Read MoreIn each winsome second, Lucky continuously unearths affecting ways of making cantankerous endearing. With grizzled resolve and humor as dry as the desert he walks in, the late Harry Dean Stanton personifies the charm culled from the crotchety put on display in John Carroll Lynch’s straight-shooting film. Far from any Grumpy Old Men folly and possessing a hidden heart twice the size of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, meet a lovable unlovable asshole that flourishes to galvanize unexpected wholesomeness from the prickliest of cacti.
Read MoreTo get people talking about a film, or better yet keep them talking about it, storytellers and filmmakers can choose one of two extremes to ensure conversation. The film can have everything to say, or it can have nothing to say. Either route creates captivating and immeasurable levels of ambiguity that are irresistible for near-infinite discourse. The vagueness, obscurity, and uncertainty were driving forces that made 1982’s Blade Runner an initially maligned vision that grew to become a revered science fiction classic. The power of ambiguity strikes again with its long-distance sequel.
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