The Zone of Interest doesn’t go there, and it wasn’t going to. The cold and taciturn performances from Freidel and Hüller are designed to not create sympathy for the subjects, which is perfectly fine. Rather this film was just going to sit there and listen. That’s the experience it was aiming for, and, in doing so, it participates in a layer of its own “how could they.” The trouble is, like the Nazis portrayed in the film, the answers to that question are “quite easily” and “quite comfortably.” Because their needles don’t move, neither do yours against its painful pace.

MOVIE REVIEW: Molli and Max in the Future

Without looking, you would think the two titular romantic prospects were strolling through autumnal city parks wearing cozy knit sweaters and sipping cups of hot or cold refreshment. It’s when you open your eyes that perspectives radically change for Molli and Max in the Future because there’s not a tree or stitch of wool in sight. Instead, the last three words of the film's title come into play. Our two will-they/won’t-they lovebirds are two intergalactic citizens crossing spacefaring paths in a future stocked with aliens, demigods, and advanced technology.

MOVIE REVIEW: Cold Copy

All that frost and frost is precisely the sordid tone and temperature of Cold Copy. The drama at hand is not seeking comfort or heroism within the championed profession. It’s a duel of who prods enough to get the last word or final competitive undercut. While plenty interesting, Cold Copy may or may not be the kind of seedy dive you are willing to embrace.

2024, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 31, 2024Cold Copy, Bel Powely, Tracce Ellis RossComment

MOVIE REVIEW: I.S.S.

Forging this more mature path, Ariana DeBose and Masha Mashkova become the invaluable and cautiously wise characters willing to contemplate risks before acting on them. They are welcome and instantly engaging presences for discerning science fiction audiences. Still, those more casual crowd arriving to I.S.S. thirsty for spectacle will wish– and not be entirely wrong in doing so– the movie set off more incendiary moments higher in the sky than the ones far away on the ground.

2024, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 26, 2024I.S.S., Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Bleecker StreetComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Origin

The movie is here to make people feel by beautifying truths, creating kindred spirits, and it does so without losing or skimping an ounce of the subject’s powerful commentary smoldering with fire-branded parallels spanning the globe. One now exists to enhance the other. Origin can and should be a door-opener to Wilkerson’s work and the immense amount of testimonies, reflections, and avenues of learning that do not fit in a single film or book. Few movies generate as much library homework as tissue boxes to replace, but here we are, lifted better in our lives for receiving both assignments.

2023, 5 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 20, 2024Origin, Ava DuVernay, Aunjanue EllisComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Which Brings Me to You

As Jane and Will’s mutual chapters get closer to their as-yet-unrevealed thirtysomething present situations, the chemistry between the actors increases. More importantly, the maturity of the romantic risks involved also increases. For a movie that started as hot-and-bothered as it did, the pendulum swing to dramedy heaviness of what’s really going on with these two in Which Brings Me to You is welcome and precarious at the same time. Like the leap the characters need to make to be better together, the 24-hour shorthand and 98-minute rush to pull it off is challenging and you miss the challenging humor.

MOVIE REVIEW: Poor Things

For better or worse, Poor Things is a movie of unsavory urges and scratched itches that pull the viewer down a pernicious drain of unconscionable behavior. There is a dark comedy buried in the muck of Poor Things that curdles to the surface in the final third as our strong female becomes the master of her own fate, body, heart, and business. Stone sells it at every turn. Still, at many points, one will wonder whether all of the absurdity will amount to something exotic or vapid.

2023, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, 4 STARSDon ShanahanDecember 16, 2023Poor Things, Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos, A24, A24 Films, Mark Ruffalo, Willem DafoeComment

MOVIE REVIEW: American Fiction

American Fiction adds rich depth to its main character and becomes a more abundant movie. A movie of all industry schemes might veer to the cockamamie. Likewise, a movie of all family drama would get encumbered by the shuffle of heaviness. With American Fiction, those emotions balance each other, and audiences get the best of both worlds with arguably the year’s best satire packaged within a tissue-pulling, affecting drama.

MOVIE REVIEW: Black White and the Greys

How did this all happen? What can tear apart a marriage? Most folks go straight to the tawdry daytime talk show topics of money and infidelity, neither of which are anywhere close to the catalysts in Black White and the Greys and there’s zero crowd to watch it all go down. Rather, the frost seeping into the cracks of the Grey family lies in a growing divergence of intellectual contrasts and moral conflicts.

MOVIE REVIEW: Saturday Night Inside Out

Saturday Night Inside Out follows a 26-year-old Chicagoan as he navigates an emotionally arduous 24-hour span that may or may not become a turning point for the next five or ten years of his life. Step back from that one-sentence summary and ask yourself what kind of events, especially for an individual at that age, could possibly construct a defining moment on that level. If you’re thinking about friends, family, career and a love life, you would be right because all four of those–and then some– come into play in Saturday Night Inside Out.

2023, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 4, 2023Saturday Night Inside Out, Connor McBride, Zach PapalasComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Outlaw Johnny Black

Outlaw Johnny Black is a unique genre experiment that knows damn well what cookie cutter it’s using. Led by star Michael Jai White stepping into the director’s chair, these are the people that made the hilarious blaxploitation cult classic Black Dynamite 14 years ago. Yes! Go ahead and drop a Jules Winfield reply to that news. With a clenched fist and a tongue in its cheek, White and company are here to emulate and embellish the best and worst qualities of westerns by making a cool one of their own.

2023, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanSeptember 20, 2023Outlaw Johnny Black, Michael Jai WhiteComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Dreamin' Wild

Dreamin’ Wild comports itself unlike many other musical biopics. This one is not trying to strap a rocket to the back of its subjects and launch them to superstar heavens in front of massive crowds shining a barrage of spotlights and flashbulbs. That’s not the Emersons’ story whatsoever. As hinted at before, these songs, characterized, again, as a “dream-like symphony to teenhood,” came from an emotional place beyond what was captured on vinyl. Fragile care was needed.