Adapting video games for film tends to underwhelm at the box office. It either takes a straight-forward premise and mucks it up (poor besmirched Super Mario Bros) or largely misunderstands what made the game fun (this includes you Street Fighter)…. Read More ›
It really is a glorious time to be a horror fan. Once relegated to midnight broadcasts on cable channels and the whole of October at your local Cineplex, now it’s a whole new ballgame. In 2017 alone audiences had Get… Read More ›
There’s a common misconception that if a movie premieres on Netflix it’s somehow not worthy of a theater run; as though only films shown in a cinema house are somehow the only ones worthy of an audience. If films like… Read More ›
A well-executed documentary works on multiple levels. There’s the central story the director explores, but then there’s some other aspect that finds its way on in, often by surprise. Sometimes these elements overshadow the central story, others they enhance –… Read More ›
There’s something about watching a monster fight that really packs people into the theater. Whether it’s classic creatures like King Kong and Godzilla or newer fare like those seen in 2006’s The Host or any glimpsed in the Cloverfield series,… Read More ›
There’s been a wonderful resurgence in the teen dramedy subgenre in the last few years that’s given audiences films like The Edge of Seventeen and Saturday Church. Films that take an honest look at teens in a period of crisis… Read More ›
Imagine yourself in a confined space. There are two ways in, yet it feels like there’s no way out. You’re surrounded by life-long friends who adore you, until they don’t and then all bets are off. As French philosopher Jean-Paul… Read More ›
Describing Flower, the second feature film by Max Winkler as idiosyncratic would be the tip of the iceberg. The trailer centers on sexually promiscuous 17-year-old Erica (played by the versatile Zoey Deutch), a teen who spends her free time scouting… Read More ›
Documentarian James Demo picked a heck of a subject for his first full-feature subject: Padraig O’Malley. O’Malley is a brilliant man who has written several books on his experiences working with various world leaders, who gathered together a group of… Read More ›
With only one other directorial credit under his belt, writer/director Philip Gelatt helms the full feature adaptation of Laird Barron’s Lovecraftian short story —30– under the name They Remain. Tracking the complex relationship between two scientists working in a remote encampment,… Read More ›
Everyone knows that one super-competitive person. The one who will bury your nose in their victory or flip over the table in defeat. Yet we love them because they’re family and it’s usually only during game night that their inner… Read More ›
Writer/director Duncan Jones broke onto the scene with the 2009 underground hit Moon, which tracked lunar engineer Sam Bell’s (Sam Rockwell) last days of his three-year mission as his solitary life finally begins to take its toll. Unfortunately, Jones’s follow-ups… Read More ›
The Fifty Shades book series by E.L. James never personally struck a chord despite its global appeal. So when I got the opportunity to review Fifty Shades Freed, the climactic chapter of the noteworthy series, I did my due-diligence and… Read More ›
A long time coming, Black Panther is making his solo cinematic debut in Marvel Studio’s 18th addition to their Marvel Cinematic Universe. In an era of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, representation matters more now than ever. Audiences desire good… Read More ›
Last October audiences were inundated by interesting films that drew them in a multitude of directions. Blade Runner 2049, The Florida Project, The Foreigner, and The Square all hit cinemas small and large, so it’d be hard to blame anyone… Read More ›
An alternate version of this review was published by CLTure on their site on January 19, 2018. September 11th, 2001 is a day that everyone in the U.S. remembers; a day of great pain and sorrow which inspired men and… Read More ›
An odd, animated film, Liu Jian’s ‘Have a Nice Day’ is a mixture of meditative imagery, thoughtful dialogue, and creative characters resulting in an unique cinematic experience when a driver who decides to rob the money courier sets off a… Read More ›
Audiences will quickly compare Saturday Church to Moonlight, the 2017 Best Picture Oscar winner which also tells a personal, character-driven story about a boy’s search for self at the intersection of sexual identity and race. While both excel at telling… Read More ›
Based-on-a-true-story biopics tend to fall into one of two categories: gritty or glossy. Weirdly, Netflix’s latest original feature The Polka King can’t decide which one it wants to be. Drawing from the documentary film The Man Who Would Be Polka… Read More ›
The Strange Ones already spent time on the festival circuit in 2017 – earning awards at SXSW, BAM Cinema Fest, Greenwich International Film Festival, and others – before being made available exclusively through DIRECTV starting December 7, 2017 and is… Read More ›