Andrea Riseborough Gives a Loud, Oscar-y Performance in Emotional Drama ‘To Leslie’ (Review)
When I was in middle school, a classmate’s family won the lottery. I don’t remember the exact amount, but my increasingly hazy memory is telling me it was in the tens of millions. I have no idea what that infusion of money did for the family that won it, or what ultimately became of them. […]
Shortcomings: Randall Park Shows Directorial Talent (Sundance Review)
Someday, Randall Park is going to make a great movie. You can feel his smarts clearly as you watch Shortcomings, his directorial debut which premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Alas, today is not that day. It’s a film that feels fueled by good ideas and noble intentions […]
“Sometimes I Think About Dying” Finds Connection in the Mundane (Sundance Review)
Sometimes I Think About Dying premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. An expansion of the short film of the same name which premiered at Sundance 2019, the film tells the story of a young woman struggling with the ennui brought about by an apparently meaningless office existence. Fran is the sort of woman […]
Vengeance: BJ Novak’s Magnum Opus (Review)
When I was a teenager I once remarked to my older brother, who for as long as I can remember has shaped the way I think about subjects ranging from sports to serious world issues, that I thought it was incredible that Weezer came out of the gate with their fantastic self-titled debut album (known […]
Honor Society: When Subverting Expectations Goes Right (Review)
Honor (Angourie Rice, Spider-Man: Far From Home) has it all figured out: high school friendships are superficial, her parents’ relationship is loveless and merely bound together by her existence, and anyone still in her small town is stuck there because of their own shortcomings. Honor does not want to be another statistic, so from her […]
DC League of Super-Pets: A Fun Family Friendly Adventure (Review)
Existential Crises happen at the funniest times. As I, one of four people in the movie theater on this particular Friday afternoon, sat in my assigned leather recliner chair patiently waiting for DC League of Super-Pets, a thought crossed my mind; “have we gone too far?” I have already paid to see my fair share […]
Nope: A Takedown of Influencer Culture (Review)
On New Years Eve in 2017, former social media influencer/semi-professional boxer and current WWE superstar Logan Paul visited Aokigahara near the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, also unflatteringly known as “suicide forest”. There, he, camping with a few friends, found a recently deceased corpse and decided to film it to upload for his many […]
“The Black Phone” is effectively chilling, even for horror skeptics (Review)
Full disclosure; I don’t like horror movies. I was born too late to be nostalgic for the classics, and was the perfect young age to be terrified by the 90’s slashers that, in retrospect, aren’t all that scary. A movie like Scream, for example, was a type of meta I wasn’t capable of understanding at […]
“Cha Cha Real Smooth” succeeds in capturing human connection (Review)
Take a trip back to 8th grade with me. You’re a wallflower staring out at a sea of your peers, many of them far more bold than you would ever dare to be. Remember the anxiety and the excitement. The whole world was in front of you filled with seemingly infinite possibilities. In Cooper Raiff’s […]
‘La Haine’: The Film For A Generation…and The Generation After That…and The Generation After That… (Discussion)
A day is nothing more than a ticking time bomb in the slice-of-dreadful life drama La Haine. In 1990s riot-torn France, tensions between police and those they’ve sworn to protect are high after a brutal night of protests, riots, and looting. We are shepherded on our journey by Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert, each with a […]
“Jerry and Marge Go Large” is pleasant and utterly disposable (Tribeca Film Festival ’22 Review)
Jerry and Marge Go Large is a genial story of a recently laid off older man who manages to crack the formula for regularly winning a lottery game. He uses his discovery to win millions of dollars which is largely deployed to help revitalize his community. It’s a bit of groaner of a plot description, […]
“Lightyear” Soars When It Escapes the IP Shackles (Review)
It’s hard to escape the cynical genesis of this movie. Confusingly branded from the jump (voice actor Chris Evans once tweeted that it was about the human man upon whom the Buzz Lightyear toy was based), and the final explanation – that the film is the movie that blew Andy’s mind and inspired his desire […]