The popular idiom “Many hands make light work,” first stated by John Heywood, is incredibly true, especially when working toward the same goal. Professional and large or amateur and small (or some combination), all film productions have some kind of… Read More ›
“Do you wanna drink, hey do you wanna party? Hey, this is old Hank, ready to get your summer started I cooked a pig in the ground, we got some beer on ice And all my rowdy friends are coming… Read More ›
In a year where most corners of the art form — horror, action blockbusters, dramas, comedies, etc. — have been uneven in the wake of the WGA-SAG-AFTRA strikes, it’s been a pretty great year for queer cinema. I Saw the… Read More ›
While his first directing/writing feature, When You Finish Saving the World (2022) met with some very mixed reception, Jesse Eisenberg’s latest, A Real Pain, is a hilarious, heartfelt, soul-touching 90 minutes exploring grief (past and present). It’s indicative of a… Read More ›
Touted as the first Irish-language horror film, John Farrelly’s An Taibhse (The Ghost) is a well-intentioned mix of folk horror, disturbing imagery, and narrative references to the horror genre in general (mostly The Shining (1980)). With an all-too familiar setting… Read More ›
Redemption stories come in a great many forms. Time loops stories utilize the constriction created by a repeated day(s) to force introspection and change, the loop broken in comedies (Groundhog Day), dramas (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), and horror… Read More ›
It requires a specific dedication and abdication of self to become a guardian of another person. To that end, the truest lesson I’ve learned as a parent is that it’s not for the weak. In the days where a “village”… Read More ›
As a New Yorker born and raised, there’s one specific sub-genre that has always been a comforting media blanket for me: fantasies that take place in the Big Apple. From the time-traveling hijinks of Kate and Leopold to the animated… Read More ›
Sometimes the best way to get an audience to consider something, to battle with the way they perceive or process something, is to give it to them wrapped in something else. In the parlance of the 2024 action rom-com The… Read More ›
Hallie Meyers-Shyer hasn’t written or directed a feature (or anything) since 2017’s Home Again, which was a very schmaltzy movie with Reese Witherspoon (Sing 2). So, when her new movie cast Michael Keaton (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance))… Read More ›
“And so he told me his secret formula for happiness. Part one of the two-part plan was that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day, like anyone else. But then came part two of… Read More ›
When we think of directors who are famous for what they’ve done in a specific genre, it’s weird to see a movie from them that is so enriched by their personal life and feels like an incredibly personable film. That… Read More ›
Ready for a trauma dump? Because unfortunately, it’s necessary for me to properly explain why I did not like Parker Finn’s Smile very much. One week before Smile dropped into theaters in September of 2022, my best friend killed themself… Read More ›
In what could be described as a movie that lives in the same spiritual world as Daina Oniunas-Pusić’s Tuesday (2023), Andrea Arnold’s Bird, similar in vibes and tonal elements in storytelling, focuses on coming-of-age and growing up faster than needed… Read More ›
If you’ve never heard of the name Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us; The Big 4) then there is something you need to fix, immediately. One of the most exciting directors to exist today, he never misses and continues… Read More ›
Romantic films are easy to find. There are entire network television channels dedicated to them, but finding one rom-com that is so brilliant yet mediocre is a magical feat. And that isn’t necessarily a back-handed compliment but more commentary on… Read More ›
The Luckiest Man in America is both the title of Samir Oliveros’s second feature and also could be used to identify the star of the movie, someone who exploded onto the scene a few years back and continues to shine… Read More ›
Can anybody tell me the way to make it? I guess no, I’m the only one. I never offered me a wrong future. No matter what happens, I won’t chill, I won’t stop. I’ll make you prouder step by step!… Read More ›
Trigger Warning: There is a sequence in the climax of the film with extensive cross-cutting that may be disturbing for photosensitive viewers. There are some films which, from the start, communicate to the audience that what they’re about to witness… Read More ›
As a huge fan of Batman, I can confirm and say confidently I thought Todd Phillip’s Joker was good, but that’s about it. It certainly was not the Clown Prince of Darkness we’ve come to see on screen or really… Read More ›