It’s always great pleasure seeing such movies where from the opening scene you’re thrown into strange atmosphere of weirdness, tempting and seductive world from where you don’t really want to come back, no matter how uncontrolled the environment is. But in the end when the film over, you will feel a strong feeling of appreciation […]
The scary part is the lack of control. When you’re asleep, anything can happen. Your mind can dream up things wonderful and terrible. You can talk out loud. You can get up and move and walk with zero conscious control over your limbs. Recently, I fell asleep at my desk while working on a job […]
Directed by Marielle Heller; Nightbitch is a new comedy/drama/horror film starring Amy Adams. With a supporting cast that includes Scoot McNairy and Zoë Chao, Adams plays a woman whose domesticity takes a surreal turn after pausing her career to become a full-time mother. Erm… So, this is very unexpected. I’m down for the humour and […]
The working title of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindnesses was And. In some ways, that was a more apposite title, since this anthology comedy is obsessed with one of the uncanniest spectacles in a hyper-connected world: the physical spaces and silences between things. The structure of the film itself reflects that interest in connective tissue […]
Happy New Year! Nothing rings in another year like a review on a film focusing on the economic collapse of the late 2000s, right? Anyway… Montages of excess and breaking of the fourth wall allow The Big Short to perfectly illustrate the underlying messages throughout the film. That is to say, the economic greed and […]
Burt Lancaster described his participation in what would become the first of a batch of 1970s all-star disaster epics as the worst picture he’s ever done. He declared it “the worst piece of junk ever made.” Perhaps because of this assessment we were eventually blessed with the Airplane! spoofs a decade later. Airport […]
Saltburn wasn’t on my radar at all until it seemed to take my workplace by storm. ‘You like films don’t you, Alex? You might like Saltburn. It’s on Prime. Good but proper weird, don’t put it on if there’s any kids around.‘ I’d say that put it on my watchlist, but that doesn’t really mean […]
Milos Forman ran away from his home country, Czechoslovakia, after the Russian tanks put down the more liberal Czech government, and he was subsequently fired from the Czechoslovakia state-run movie studio. His American movie that he most likely felt an affinity for was his cinematic interpretation of Ken Kesey’s brilliant exhibition of the totalitarian […]
Themes of ‘identity’ and ‘role-playing’ swirl intensely in this decent offering starring the Berlinale award-winning Sebastian Stan, who plays a disfigured man who begins to morph into a normal-looking person after an experimental clinical trial.
Although he has no plans to step aside as the head of Waystar Royco, the international media conglomerate controlled by his family, aging patriarch Logan Roy is contemplating what the future holds. He has lingered in the limelight longer than even he thought he would, and now family members want to run the company as […]
Succession TV Show Review: A Masterclass in Family Drama
There’s something to be said for being the right age for a movie. I never admitted it at the time for fear of being labeled a Whiny Little Scaredy Cat¸ but I was wildly unsettled by my first encounter with The Addams Family. They’re weird, they’re imposing, and all those cobwebs indicate nests of spiders […]
Palm Springs is a colourful and fun take on the time-loop sub-genre; a genre that has been poked and prodded in every which way for decades since Groundhog Day. If you’re looking for a summer flick filled with light laughs, this one is for you. In saying that though, Palm Springs also cynical and bittersweet at times.
Palm Springs review – a funny and thought-provoking time-loop comedy
While cinematic adaptations of novels are common and biopics about famous writers are hardly exceptional, a film made to put a real author through fictions similar to his or her own work is something else. That is the central issue in Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka, a taut nightmare that never quite convinces its purpose is equal […]
The buzz has been off the charts for “The Substance” following its May world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Screenplay. Since then it has only gained momentum, recently showing at the Toronto Independent Film Festival where it took home one of the People’s Choice awards. Now […]
REVIEW: “The Substance” (2024)
While the two shows feature drastically different tones, since they’re both set in Philadelphia, Brunson and the team behind “It’s Always Sunny” felt it was the perfect opportunity to bring back a TV staple.
I loved The Substance for its audacity, confrontational nature, indelible performances and wicked sense of humor. It’s an unforgettably wild ride of excess. Recommended.
One feels that thinking on a film by the Coen brothers, especially a comedy, is a fruitless exercise. Those guys design their work in such a way that it’s not merely immune to navel-gazing, it actually mocks the navel-gazers. And bless their hearts for it. As David Bazan has sung: You’re so creative With your…
What’s an out of work clown to do? Louison (played by Dominique Pinon) didn’t lose his job due to a lack of charm, he has that in abundance. Unfortunately his life took an unexpected turn with the death of his performing partner. The truth to be told, his partner didn’t simply die, he was…
Woody Allen’s 50th film, “Coup de Chance” made a pretty good impression after premiering at last year’s Venice International Film Festival and then in France a short time later. Since then it has been finding its way to screens including here in the States courtesy of MPI Media Group. It’s Allen’s first French-language feature. And…
Inisherin is a (fictional) island off the coast of Ireland. It is 1923. The civil war (“A bad do, that.”) can be heard but, on the island, there is nothing to do but toddle off down the pub or gossip in the general store, saving up the details for confession. And, in this world, Colm, […]
Film Review: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)