By Marc S. Sanders Only the headlining actors’ names appear before the title of the film, Lucy, but ten minutes into it I should have known I was watching a Luc Besson actioner. It’s over the top and proudly exaggerated in its fiction like Leon: The Professional or The Fifth Element. Because this one has Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman talking […]
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One of Kaurismaki’s funniest and most fascinating deviations in his oeuvre, this East Goes West road movie sutures music, cross-cultural misunderstanding, and deadpan humour into a pseudo-documentary, crowned by arguably the best hairstyle ever committed to celluloid.
Continue reading “Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)”
Whether it’s the Irish, Scots, Canadians, or Australians, former British Empire dominions have long been wary of how the British used their allies during warfare. From the killing of Canadian soldiers at Ypres to the brutal fights of Australians at Gallipoli, many believed the Dominion armies would be the first to attack, resulting in fewer […]
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‘Exploring’ features the filmographies of filmmakers that I’ve largely completed and celebrates them on the week of their birthdays.
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A better Netflix thriller than you may realize. I’m not surprised that the generic shark thriller “Thrash” would make it to Number 1 most streaming movie chart on Netflix a few weeks ago. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Charlize Theron vehicle “Apex” would reach the top, but unlike “Thrash,” this one is […]
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A provincial man who’s trying to find a job stays with his city cousin in Ceylan’s masterful third feature that probes issues of personal stasis and social alienation in contemporary Turkish society, marked by restrained performances that accrue a quiet emotional depth.
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Catalan filmmaker Carla Simon made her name with the tiny, plotless, yet moving family dramas Summer 1993 and Alcarras. Now, with Romeria, she expands her ambitions into a magical realist mystery but, sadly, the leap has not been made gracefully. A few strikingly beautiful moments aside, Romeria is a frustratingly dull and repetitive film, taking […]
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Rohmer’s provocative final entry from his ‘Six Moral Tales’ calls attention to the temptation of extramarital affairs, as a man in a happy marriage contemplates putting his immoral theoretical thoughts into practice.
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Lee Cronin’s The Mummy offers an interesting take on the Egyptology horror genre. It’s perhaps best described as being about two very different families, one American, one Egyptian. We spend most of the film with the American family, the Cannons, who are living in Cairo, and whose life is thrown into chaos when their daughter […]
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Michael is a lively, if incredibly constricted look at Michael Jackson’s life. It offers a swiss-cheese rendering of his personal life in between electric reenactments of him recording and performing. Thankfully, the latter makes up for the former, and the movie is entertaining in a “hall of fame highlight reel” way. Mildly recommended.
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Father Mother Sister Brother belongs to a sizeable subsection of Jim Jarmusch’s oeuvre: works that exist somewhere between feature-length films and compilations of short films. It consists of three roughly forty-minute vignettes, each of which traces the late stage in a family dynamic where there’s not much more to say, or that can be said. […]
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Bob: “I need the rendezvous point, you understand what I’m saying? I need it.”Comrade Josh: “I understand, and the question is “What time is it?”
Continue reading “One Battle After Another”
Project Hail Mary has defied my expectations more than any other blockbuster released in the last year. Based on the novel by Andy Weir, who also brought us The Martian, it revolves around school teacher and biologist Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling who wakes up abord a space vessel suffering from amnesia. The first […]
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In adapting Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell has been faced with a bit of a conundrum. On the other hand this is clearly a novel that is enormously significant to her, both personally and artistically. On the other hand, it’s a novel that challenges her taste for extremity and transgression, since it’s already one of the […]
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A pop star and one of her support team have an interpersonal conflict. So for the longest time Anne Hathaway was associated blockbusters in Hollywood, she’s done some indie work with films like Collosal but by and large she was in the big films. This seems to be an attempt to pivot towards art house. […]
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From stylized dresses to clingy egos, The Devil Wears Prada 2 pours like an expensive bottle of champagne full of delights.
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The story of pop superstar Michael Jackson — from his extraordinary early days in the Jackson 5 to the visionary artist whose creative ambition fuels a relentless pursuit to become the biggest entertainer in the world.
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COUNTDOWN ticks thru 101 bland minutes of science-fiction-minus monsters, a moon expedition story from 1967 (Brit release date) that opened in the US in ’68. While critics were intrigued and crowds got excited by Planet Of The Apes and were awestruck and/or baffled by 2001: A Space Odyssey, they weren’t enraptured by this realistic, down-to-Earth procedural […]
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In “Splitsville,” Carey, facing divorce, seeks comfort in his friends Julie and Paul, leading to chaos through an ‘open relationship’ experiment. The film blends humor with profound insights on love and heartbreak, showcasing characters in absurd yet relatable situations. Directed by Michael Angelo Covino, it highlights the irrationality of human instincts.
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“Funny how secrets travel…” The title page on a draft of the Lost Highway screenplay reads: “A 21st Century Horror Noir. A Graphic Investigation Into Parallel Identity Crises. A World Where Time Is Dangerously Out Of Control. A Terrifying Ride Down The Lost Highway.” When I saw Lost Highway for the first time in my […]
Continue reading “Lost Highway: David Lynch Tribute”
