Academy Award-winning writer Diablo Cody has an unparalleled gift for the sardonic. She knows just the right rhythm of mockery and skepticism to twist mundane circumstances into something both witty and affecting. When combined with director Jason Reitman (Juno and Young Adult) and his sensibilities wired to much the same wavelength, the results are gleefully glorious. With their latest collaboration Tully, the writer-and-director duo have done it again.
Read MoreThis 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 MoreThis week, I was cordially invited to re-team with the mainstays of the Kicking the Seat Podcast hosted by Ian Simmons. David Fowlie of Keeping it Reel, Emmanuel Noisette of Eman's Movie Reviews, Ian, and I consider ourselves Earth's Mightiest Critics to discuss Marvel's summer-movie megalith, Avengers: Infinity War! We decompressed and ranted after an early screening at the MacGuffins bar and lounge of the AMC River East location. Presented here is an evenly divided round table of opinions.
Read MoreFor this departing month of April, Aaron White of the Feelin' Film podcast are pleased to present you a conversation about 1953’s Shane, just in time for its 65th anniversary. Newer or younger audiences may recognize this film as the allegorical pairing made in James Mangold’s Logan, but this classic western sits at #46 on the AFI Top 100 10th Anniversary list and #3 on the westerns list for good reasons.
Read MoreAtypical to the big-talking hot heads and inflated anti-hero personalities common of the genre, Alan Ladd’s cowboy and director George Stevens’ Shane operates with a code and a compass that is idyllic and pure. Ranked the #3 western of all-time by the American Film Institute and their #45 overall American film, Shane is an anointed classic and masterpiece. Why? It’s because Shane carries itself with equal parts heroic grandeur and hardscrabble ethics that can still resonate and draw audience appreciation today, 65 years later.
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 MoreFrees’s voiceover goal is to change Donald’s mind about math, to ruffle his feathers of antiquated ideas, false concepts, superstitions, confusion, and general bungling (all revealed in pseudo-analog-Inside Out fashion). Whether the knowledge of these “boundless treasures of science” stick in his bird brain remains to be seen. Spirited and pristinely stylish animation, dancing shapes, and moveable manipulatives fill the screen backed by music from Buddy Baker, a veteran of 26 Disney films of the era.
Read MoreThe post-credits cameo of the big bad Thanos in The Avengers set into motion an even greater arc of ambition that catapulted two more phases, twelve more films, and dozens of new major players since. Now at the ten-year mark of this endeavor, all of the patience, enthusiasm, and success pays off with Avengers: Infinity War. Thriving with a symmetry of captivating gravitas and heroic thrill on many levels, this saga’s newest peak is an expanse of scorched earth that stings, shocks, lingers, and satisfies.
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.
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