⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. In a very strict culture, two people who love each other must get married first before they are allowed to get close to each other. If intimacy occurs before marriage, it can be punishable with something as harsh as a death sentence. Nazli and Emre, escaping their homes, hope […]
Not everyone’s going to have an easy life. So this is about a young man (Tom Holland). He goes from college dropout to Army medic, and he serves two years in the Iraq war. He has PTSD when he returns home, which leads to drug addiction. This is an expensive habit to maintain, so he […]
Robbing Banks with PTSD – Cherry (2021)
It may be tempting to write “#Alive” off as just another zombie movie. In a way that’s what it is. This South Korean survival thriller from director and co-writer Cho Il-hyung doesn’t bring anything particularly new and it certainly doesn’t reinvent the horror sub-genre. At the same time, it’s hard not to enjoy its nimble […]
“Six Minutes to Midnight” is the sort of high gloss “programmer” Hollywood and Pinewood (and Shepperton, etc.) used to turn out by the dozens. The plot has Nazis, spies, action and preposterous coincidences and improbabilities, a “talks too much” villain, cheap thrills and sentimental sop. But thanks to a game cast and a clever and […]
Movie Review: On the eve of war, it’s “Six Minutes to Midnight”
Sound or the lack of it is an under-appreciated element of cinema, so much so that films that pay extra attention to it stand out. The Oscar-nominated “Sound of Metal” is wholly conceived around loud noise and learning to live in silent deafness. The filmmakers behind “Rose Plays Julie” take care to use muffled sound, […]
Movie Review: “Rose Plays Julie”
A young woman (Lene Kqiku) awakes drugged and restrained in a strange house, but her captor may be more than he appears. I encountered this short film on Amazon Prime. The premise sounded interesting and with a runtime of only 7.5 I was intrigued. It does a good job of giving the film an undercurrent […]
Hutch Mansell is a mild-mannered everyday average Joe. His days are an endless cycle of monotony – get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, go to bed. The only real highlights of his week are his morning cups of coffee and missing the trash truck every Tuesday. Even his family seems […]
Following the enormous success of “Hamilton” what better time for Warner Brothers to release “In the Heights”. This musical drama is an adaptation of a Tony-winning stage play by Quiara Alegría Hudes and “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda. Jon M. Chu of “Crazy Rich Asians” fame directs the film from a screenplay written by Hudes with […]
First Glance: “In the Heights”
⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. We always need someone who can encourage us to do things like write, sing, or study. Anything that can help us improve and get better. Or just uplift our mood so we can focus on the positive side of our life and be happier. Written and directed by Marion […]
SXSW 2021: “Ma Belle, My Beauty”
Steven Soderbergh’s latest film may not have been shot on an iPhone, but it cut down production fuss in other ways. Over three-quarters of the screenplay was shot on the Queen Mary 2, in a crossing from New York to London, and the cast almost entirely improvised their lines, taking their cues from a rough […]
Soderbergh: Let Them All Talk (2020)
This Johnny Depp thriller/police procedural was in the can long before Depp’s career imploded with allegations of physical abuse of his ex-wife Amber Heard. This March 19 (April 9 on VOD) story about the cops, what they knew and what they didn’t reveal about the two rappers’ shootings also stars Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Glenn […]
Movie Preview: The Biggie/Tupac Murders movie — “City of Lies” — finally is headed our way
© TABIJA FILM INC. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 5. When a war starts, it takes lives; but when it ends, it destroys emotionally and psychologically what’s left behind. And that’s the most difficult part, picking up the broken pieces of life that, sadly for some, will never be the same. Set in Sarajevo, Faruk (Pavle […]
Berlinale 2021: White Fortress”
In the States it seems like “Stan & Ollie” came and went with barely a peep. Yes John C. Reilly earned a Golden Globe nomination and the film received a warm reception from critics, but otherwise it’s a film that got no real attention. I don’t remember it hitting any theater around me and the […]
Sixteen is already a difficult age, with lots of challenges to navigate, but Sophie Jones has just lost her mother, so the regular rhythms of adolescence are tinged with grief and loss, which somehow makes normal rites of passage seem more trivial, yet each holds the potential power to make her forget, even for a […]
Right until the end, Tobias Lindholm’s six-part search for the truth behind journalist Kim Wall’s death is TV designed to work against the genre’s usual rhythms.
‘The Investigation’: HBO’s Danish Drama Is as Unglamorous as TV True Crime Gets
FIRST COW is one of those films that drops you into another time and every small detail adds to its palpable authenticity. Nobody films slow and beautiful stories like Kelly Reichardt. Cookie (John Magaro) is a man trying to get by in a harsh time, meeting a fellow survivor, a fellow man without place (Orion […]
Review in Brief: First Cow (2019/20)
Every major / famous film director that have had their movie grace the silver screen started out at one point as a first-time director. Younger and less experienced in the director’s seat, first time directors often fumble around in trying to juggle such cinematic storytelling […]
Calm with Horses (2019) Director – Nick Rowland (feature debut) Cast – Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar, David Wilmot Plot – Ex-boxer turned enforcer for small-time Irish crime family the Devers Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (Jarvis) finds his loyalty being tested when he is tasked with murdering an acquittance that has wronged the […]
Film Review – Calm with Horses (2019)
You can’t murder a revolution. So this is about Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield). He becomes a Black Panther and starts to get close to the Party Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). There is just one secret: Bill O’Neal is working with the FBI. Now, I was very much looking forward to this. Judas and the […]
I Am a Revolutionary – Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
“I don’t want to be ordinary. I want to be extraordinarily.” Can’t blame anyone for that. It’s a life goal of the lead character in the upcoming drama “My Salinger Year”, written and directed by Philippe Falardeau. The film is based on the memoir of Joanna Rakoff and follows her days working for one of […]
First Glance: “My Salinger Year”
