Comedy is tragedy plus time. – Samuel Clemens Early into Gilbert/Harmantown director Neil Berkeley’s new film Group Therapy, one of the central cast members, comedian Mike Birbiglia, comments that comedy is similar to therapy in that the comedian opens themselves… Read More ›
**Photosensitivity Warning: A club sequence includes a prolonged sequence of flashing lights that may prove triggering for sensitive viewers.** Shared joy is double joy; Shared sorrow is half a sorrow. – Swedish proverb Just about everywhere one looks, there’s a… Read More ›
Genuinely speaking, I don’t want to condone a movie, but the trance, anxiety, and dread that Thordur Palsson creates with his directorial debut, The Damned, needs to be studied as A Clockwork Orange-style of torture. This movie is the one… Read More ›
When the institution becomes bigger than the idea which spawned it, a problem forms. Ideas are free-flowing, malleable, capable of change with new information or situations. Institutions are rigid, structured, and harder to redirect once a flow is created. If… Read More ›
There are many reasons films get adapted. Sometimes it’s because a film wasn’t received well or, confusingly, because a film was received extraordinarily well. Adaptations aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Because someone sought director Roger Corman’s 1960 Little Shop of… Read More ›
If you have been following my writing and my thoughts on things when it comes to media, it should be apparent that my stance is, and always will be, physical media is king. It is really hard to make the… Read More ›
Obsessively pursuing art is the focus of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). The parallels to artistic pursuit as it pertains to a filmmaker are hard to miss, as are the Freudian psychoanalytics. Both of which are apt as Powell (The… Read More ›
The newest theatrical tale set in The Wild West, The Dead Don’t Hurt (2024), opens on a knight in shining armor riding horseback through the woods of France. Who this knight is and what they mean changes every time they… Read More ›
In the year 2000, no one knew of the name Karyn Kusama, and no one knew of her star Michelle Rodriguez either. However, after they both debuted with 2000’s Girlfight, they’d go on to make some incredibly intriguing pieces of… Read More ›
Finding your people while growing up is pretty difficult. It can be accidental, it can be manufactured through parental involvement, but it always remains trying as you discover who you are as you collect the people you hope to keep… Read More ›
Awards season has come and gone once again, like another overblown, overwrought, overlong thief in the night, spanning an impressive seven months from the beginning of the Venice Film Festival to that of the Academy Awards. Though, unlike other years,… Read More ›
Mangas, like all other kinds of storytelling, come in a variety of types. Americans are familiar with the isekai (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime), shonen (Jujutsu Kaisen), and parody (One-Punch Man), with several breaking through into mainstream… Read More ›
The cult cinema streaming service Arrow Player is no stranger to the grotesque, the bizarre, and the gloriously macabre, making it the perfect home for the French dark fantasy film, Pandemonium. This visceral and nightmarish flick, which made the rounds… Read More ›
The year was 2013, and David O. Russell continued to prove that he was the director that was going to change things. No matter what one thought of his films, there was no denying they had something special about them…. Read More ›
The shuriken throwing star, the black mask and suit, the high-flying moves — the few identifiers synonymous with the ninja archetype. Radiance Films brings home one of the most respected and influential ninja films of all time with the Shinobi… Read More ›
“For want of a nail …” Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Fountain (2006), and Uncut Gems (2019) are examples of a type of film which is well-made, thoughtful, subject to acclaim, and less likely to be revisited, the latter… Read More ›
When reviewing a label release for something I have never seen, it is always interesting to see how the movie looks and what the restoration does to it as there are no nostalgia/rose-colored glasses towards the project itself. The only… Read More ›
Typically, studio-released 4Ks have been poor and strip-mined of late. Usually, if you want a good edition, you’re paying out extra payola to a boutique brand with a severely limited run. But the Paramount Presents label has outdone itself with… Read More ›
The career of actor Channing Tatum is a lesson in agility and endurance. He first appeared in 2005’s Coach Carter, but it wouldn’t be until 2006’s Step Up when he would capture audiences’ attention. Since then, Tatum has bounced from… Read More ›
The Sea is Watching is the latest splash in the ongoing wave of previously unavailable East Asian films coming to America through boutique Blu-ray labels, this one through Imprint: Asia. It’s the second-to-last screenplay from one of the greatest Maestros… Read More ›