This man is a cowboy. Normally, that’s all you have to say and the portrait of toughness is painted, but therein lies the mystery within the mundane of The Rider. Populated by untrained actors and inspired by true events of these rookie performers, Chloé Zhao’s sophomore feature film stands on that determination only to slowly reveal the internal aches underneath the grizzled exteriors of hat brims, denim, and vices.
Read MoreTake Kings as how a foreigner sees our plights, troubles, and history. Ergüven has talent but comes across as tone deaf when trying for tribute out of this script that she’s been sitting on since 2011. What should be a spike through the heart gets washed away by the time a sunny Motown cover song tries to become a palette-cleansing “everything’s fine” coda and exhale moment in the end credits. Even as pure dramatization, Kings is an irresponsibly aimless one.
Read MoreThe intensity of the torrid on-screen affair in Disobedience is as strong as the rhetoric of oppression that simmers under the surface of the characters and the community they occupy. Sebastián Lelio’s follow-up to his Academy Award-winning foreign language film A Fantastic Woman teems with deeply stirring passion. Performed to a level of high commitment by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, the film repeatedly demonstrates that one of the best ways to build passion in a film is to present the implicit unspoken in a manor to outweigh explicit expression.
Read MoreTheir expansion plan was very sharp and forgoes the thirst to hack and slay mindlessly like most current horror offerings. The shrewd focus of Ghost Stories is scarce on spectacle and firmly rooted in sinister nuance. The over-caffeinated and desensitized segment of genre fans might call it boring, while the veterans who remember effective minimalism will be squeezed by the twisted nerve leading to solid suspense.
Read MoreThese narrative and aesthetic combinations make for a dynamic and sincere film from first-time writers and directors Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun. Big Fish & Begonia is an excellent place for teens to soak in some much-needed empathy against the more mindless American animated offerings. Give them an experience to absorb resonating truths on the powers of faith and love told from a different yet timeless light. They might just be better people for it.
Read MoreThe weapon of choice of Joe, the gruff contract killer of You Were Never Really Here played by Joaquin Phoenix, is an industrial ball peen hammer from his trusty local hardware store in New York. The film matches the qualities of this repurposed tool as an armament. The instrument and the art prefer the mauling nature of cold steel. Frozen by disturbing memories, the blunt object that is Lynne Ramsay’s award-winning potboiler is far more hulking than a quick death by bullet.
Read MoreFashioning itself as a coming-of-age dramedy, Krystal scratches out frank dialogue emoting on behalf of overly honest hearts. It banks on mixing sentiment built on pleasantries laced with profanity. All kinds of abrupt dysfunction and daffy discombobulation try to be endearing entanglements for entertainment, but the result is a really uneven piece of batty humor and grating romance
Read Moren concisely thematic way, the award-winning short film The Prince, written and directed by Kyra Zagorsky, is a moving artistic interpretation of one of those such moments. It indeed has a thought-provoking story to tell, and the result creates a resonating effect in short order, the chief goal of a good short film. The Prince’s key to accomplishing its depth is the twin layers it uses to portray and describe its moment.
Read MoreJourney’s End recounts the British side of a climactic four-day span from March 18-21, 1918 in the stalemate “No Man’s Land” trenches of Aisne in northern France in the lead-up to Operation Michael. Every month, each British company is required to serve six days on the front line where casualties are gravely high. Gambling with death sentences, both trooper and officer alike pray that their six days are not the ones where an offensive is being amassed or defended.
Read MoreThough measured as a small independent film, Flower is an undoubted showcase platform for the soaring talent of Zooey Deutch. Clad in her plain tank-tops and empowering a character with all kinds of obscene confidence, not even the worst behaviors on display can take away the magnetism of her frank and jarring performance. For most of the film, she shines repulsiveness with unmatched charisma.
Read MoreHot damn, you know your satire is magma-level hot when you offend the powers-that-be of a country enough to ban your film from playing on their soil. Labeled as “extremist” and a “provocation” enough to spark tabloid headlines like “the film Hitler could have made,” Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin wears a giant badge of pride next to a tiny medallion of shame on its cinematic uniform on being banned in four nations: Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.
Read MoreThe melodramatic preposterousness of Colors of the Wind is two-fold. The first layer is good old-fashioned stage magic, everything from card tricks to disappearing acts. The second comes from the notion of doppelgangers, the fanciful term for doubles, ghostly counterparts, and alter egos that have been a storytelling trope before in film. Both elements create spirited and soapy intrigue in the film when combined with the romantic destiny of star-crossed lovers.
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