Reflecting on the past, Battle of the Sexes recounts a tremendously positive turning point in women’s sports. Drawing parallels to the present, the film also stands tall as a pertinent message film where one can compare the amount of progress towards gender equality in 44 years. Injecting earnest drama and profundity into the tried-and-true sports movie formula, directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton have crafted a gratifying yarn packed with contagious enthusiasm.
Read MoreDirector Matt Ruskin’s Crown Heights presents a true story incarceration as it happened to an innocent man. Just when you think two undue years awaiting trial are shameful enough, it turns into twenty over the course of four presidencies and 99 tidy minutes. To tell the story of Colin Warner is to tell a story shared by too many thousands of other wrongfully incarcerated people within the U.S. prison system.
Read MoreDashes of kink and horror mix within Lee Amir-Cohen to create moments of shock and heat shared with Amanda Maddox in the short film The Other Place. The star, who also writes and directs this short, has crafted something creepily captivating in front of and behind the camera. Contracted properly as a short film that leaves you wanting more, this shot glass of venom is a properly measured jolt.
Read MoreThe buzzing North Carolina public within the film Logan Lucky dub the central robbery a “hillbilly heist” and an “Ocean’s 7-11” perpetrated by “redneck robbers” and “Hee Haw heroes.” With diegetic puns like those being thrown around, how could you not be entertained by Steven Soderbergh’s first feature film in four years? It’s almost an invitation to pile on. How does “clodhopper caper” sound? What about “Podunk pilfering” or “backwoods buffoonery?” I’ll settle for “hayseed hijinks.”
Read MoreThrough every snowflake and gunshot, Taylor Sheridan cuts to the marrow and keeps Wind River firmly on track with its layered stages of discovery. Tighter than Hell or High Water and more humane than Sicario, this film creates a tone of toughness balanced adroitly by human realities occurring in a dangerous place with a different set of rules. The end result is a highly engrossing mystery with the edge we have come to appreciate and admire from Sheridan.
Read MoreFor a film like Detroit with difficult content thrust upon audiences to endure, this is not a place to seek entertainment or joy. Instead, Detroit is a challenge of cementing respect and achieving an empathy deeper than basic sympathy. Step into a beyond-cautionary tale of history that school books skipped or have forgotten. Let Detroit stir and inspire conversations. Let the emotions, good and bad, come and talk about them.
Read MoreSpider-Man: Homecoming counts as a clean slate for Peter Parker’s web-slinger. Now nestled into the established Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tom Holland is a true teenage Spider-Man, one that was never successfully conveyed by two previous franchises and their over-aged actors. Aiming to please and bursting with effervescent zest at every flip, swing, and turn, John Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming succeeds as a brand new jumping off point for a character that badly needed course correction.
Read MoreThe films of Edgar Wright pulse with a signature flair for visual comedy built on wildly imaginative stylings in the areas of music, framing, camera movement, sound effects, and editing. His creative trickery wins for looks, but it also constantly advances the storytelling at hand. For that and so much more, Baby Driver is first-rate example of a kinetic film and joins the top ranks of Wright’s filmography.
Read MoreLost in Paris is an exceedingly charming ditty of a comedy from the writing, directing, and starring duo of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon. Three overlapping character-coded chapters follow a wayward character’s pratfalls and screwups through the course of their fateful intersections. Lost in Paris weaves its yarn with clever panache. It’s a surreal jaunt that juggles the cheekily uncouth with the innocently sweet inside its ever-present sense of whimsy.
Read MoreThis writer is an unabashed film music lover. I owned more film score CDs than ones of popular music back in the day and that ratio hasn’t changed with digital media. Hell, I wrote a long-form editorial three years ago proclaiming film music as an improvement of the Mozart Effect for babies and children which led to a playlist afterwards that I still use to this day. I am a mark for what Score: A Film Music Documentary was selling and many of the names and talents featured in the film are found on that personal playlist.
Read MoreThe soon-to-be 73-year-old Sam Elliott is a goddamn national treasure and no one can convince me otherwise. Most folks go straight for the man’s imposing baritone voice or his sweet ‘stache. I go for his swagger and resolve. What makes Sam’s signature timbre memorable is the determination behind it, not its sound. The purpose makes the presence. Written especially for him by writer-director Brett Haley, The Hero is a sublime epistle to the silver screen specter cast by Sam Elliott.
Read MoreWendy's founder Dave Thomas once said: “It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.” Apply that telling quote of ease and simplicity to Cars 3 as a perfect parallel. The savvy creators at Pixar know how to package a quality product of with clean and clear values that gain brand loyalty from wide audiences. Returning to its Americana roots, Cars 3 rediscovers the franchise’s successful foundation of wholesome heart.
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