This could be the greatest high brow movie battle of all time, pitting Roger Ebert’s favorite movie against the most decorated movie of the 80s. Amadeus was released in 1984 to critical praise and is the fictional biography of Mozart, the famous composer, and his story shares a lot in common with Ebert’s favorite movie, […]
Greatest of the High Brow: Beethoven vs Mozart
In 1946, a London writer, Juliet (Lily James) exchanges letters with a Guernsey farmer, Dawsey (Michiel Huisman) and she begins to learn about what the islanders endured during World War II under German occupation. I read the book on which this film is based a while ago. I’m also (as of August 2020) a resident […]
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
Title – The Wages of Fear (1953) Director – Henri-Georges Clouzot (Manon) Cast – Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli, Peter van Eyck Plot – When an oil well ignites in flames deep in a remote section of South American wilderness, a group of four men are enticed via significant financial incentives to transport a […]
Classic Review – The Wages of Fear (1953)
Christoph Waltz stars in and makes his directorial debut with “Georgetown”, a too-crazy-to-be-true crime drama that’s actually based on an true story. Well, sort of. The film is written by screenwriter David Auburn and is taken from a 2012 New York Times Magazine article by Franklin Foer titled “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown”. I haven’t […]
“There’s something sinister in the woods.” It’s not a direct line of dialogue from NEON’s upcoming eco-horror film “Gaia” but it could have been. This eerie new chiller from director Jaco Bouwer utilizes the tried-and-true creepy forest setting to great effect, sucking us into another bizarre and unsettling deep-woods scenario that melds mystery with the […]
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 7 out of 10. Well, this show has been all the rave recently, and in my typical fashion, I went into this one hoping that I’d be able to go against the tide and rip Mare of Easttown to pieces. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing that, but it’s not exactly a laudation either… […]
Moreish Mare of Easttown Proves You Can Have Too Much Of A Good Thing
Prisoners – MOVIE REVIEWKeller’s daughter goes missing and when he soon realises that the police are taking longer than he thought, he decides to take things into his own hands by going out to find his daughter’s kidnapper himself. However, his mental health begins to decline and so he starts doing things he will soon regret leading him […]
This recently restored film is an interesting look at George Romero and a controversial subject. The Amusement Park (1973) was a discarded film, originally created by Romero as a commission work for the Lutheran Service Society in Pittsburg, but not widely used and thought lost. The original 16mm reels were sitting in Romero’s basement aka […]
One Day YOU will be old – The Amusement Park review #georgeromero
Where were you in 2006? Back in the days of flip-phones and Netscape, you probably couldn’t have it much worse than Michael (Ozark’s Charlie Tahan). He’s working as a campus bus driver, ferrying boozed and drugged up students around a freezing Rochester New York, with the attendant vomit-stains and fractured feelings about life that predictably […]
A Quiet Place was perhaps the pinnacle of the sensory deprivation horror of the late 2010s – the last of a plethora of films that tried to reinvest the multiplex with a new sensory immediacy by focusing on characters who had one or many senses disabled. That movement didn’t necessarily feel exhausted by A Quiet […]
Krasinski: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
Needless to say my expectations for the new Christian Petzold film were through the roof. The German filmmaker’s last two movies, 2014’s “Phoenix” and 2018’s “Transit”, are both snugly among my favorites from the last decade. His latest “Undine” has finally come to the States courtesy of IFC Films. And while it might not pack […]
Title – Dreamland (2019) Director – Miles Joris-Peyrafitte (As You Are) Cast – Margot Robbie, Finn Cole, Garrett Hedlund, Travis Fimmel Plot – During the heat of the Great Depression, lonely Texan teenager Eugene Evans (Cole) strikes up a friendship with on the run bank robber Allison Wells (Robbie) as the two hatch a plan […]
Film Review – Dreamland (2019)
Ok, who hasn’t dreamed dark thoughts about some social media troll who’s made disgusting, cruel or hateful comments about something you’ve said, shared or posted? No one, right? There’s something very satisfying about the thought that some thinks-he-or-she-is-anonymous online troll realizing, with shock, that they aren’t protected from their ugly, sometimes violent opinions by “anonymity” […]
Movie Review: “The Columnist” has a REAL problem with hate mail
(Anne Marie Foy/Netflix) Where will Sandy’s life end up in the third season of The Kominsky Method TV show on Netflix? As we all know, the Nielsen ratings typically play a big role in determining whether a TV show like The Kominsky Method is cancelled or renewed for season four (in this case, we know season […]
The Kominsky Method: Season Three Viewer Votes
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 8.5 out of 10. This happens to be a great film, yet also an action film, yet also with a deep, dark message. How? In the modern age, it’s sad that all of those are basically exclusive from one another. But, back in the early seventies, The French Connection was just about ready […]
The Awesome Bleakness Of The French Connection
It’s been a minute since Angelina Jolie has starred in a proper adult action movie- in fact, her last one was “The Tourist” in 2010 (god, remember “The Tourist“?). But Jolie is back at it, soon to appear in Marvel’s “The Eternals,” and currently starring in writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” But […]
Review: “Those Who Wish Me Dead”
“American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally” is the new film from Michael Polish that tells the story of Mildred Gillars, later given the nickname “Axis Sally”. She was an American broadcaster who shared propaganda over the airwaves for Nazi Germany during World War II. After the war she was taken into custody and put […]
First Glance: “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally”
Director – Joe Wright (Atonement) Cast – Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Jason Leigh Plot – Agoraphobic New Yorker Anna Fox (Adams) lives a secluded life stuck in her apartment afraid to venture out into the outside world but […]
Film Review – The Woman in the Window (2021)
Not everyone remembers that “Undine” or Ondine is a name from mythology, a water nymph of “The Little Mermaid” variety — one with a great gravitas attached to her love life. With or without that knowledge, the opening “break-up” scene in Christian Petzold’s German fantasy based on that myth is dark and intense. Johannes (Jacob […]
Movie Review: A dark romantic fantasy, in and out of the water — “Undine”
It’s great seeing Eric Bana not just getting a leading role, but getting a really meaty one in a movie that lets him show why he’s such an underrated actor. “The Dry”, an Australian thriller from director Robert Connolly, marks Bana’s first feature film appearance since 2017. Written by Connolly and Harry Cripps, it’s an […]
