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.
Continue reading “The Substance”Drama
Movie Review: The Outrun
By John Corrado Saoirse Ronan takes on the role of a young alcoholic in The Outrun. It’s a role that allows the actress to deliver an incredible performance showcasing her full depth and range, as the drama depicts the addiction and recovery process as an ongoing journey. It’s based on author Amy Liptrot’s memoir of […]
www.kisafilms.com
Joker Folie Á Deux is a Don’t
Joker: Folie Á Deux will leave folks split on their opinions and we all know that doing sequels can be a bit dicey trying to recapture the magic. Lightning in a bottle didn’t go down this time, but if you like musicals, witnessing a Phoenix and Gaga duet is totally worth it.
www.kisafilms.com
The Delinquents (2023) Movie Review
Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents is not a heist film, but it does begin with an elaborate bank robbery. It is not exactly a thriller, either, though it borrows from plenty of the tropes you’d find in an exciting thriller film with a heist as its centerpiece. Elaborate planning, blackmail, prison politics, uneasy partnerships, paranoia of…
www.kisafilms.com
The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry: A Short Film
The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry is set between Berlin and a small port town overlooking the Red Sea, with a rather complicated history
www.kisafilms.com
Burn After Reading – Precious Bodily Fluids
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…
www.kisafilms.com
Bergman Island: Niche Indie Film for Art House Enthusiasts
Right from the first scene in Bergman Island, it is apparent that this is a movie made with a very particular audience in mind. You can tell that it will never crossover into pop culture or even into the conversations of casual movie fans, like a lot of indies playing in the festival circuit, do.…
www.kisafilms.com
Movie Review: Purple Noon
This is the first post in The Cinematic Mr. Ripley, a series for the MovieThoughts category of my blog that considers moral themes in Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels and the film adaptations of those books. This post looks at Purple Noon, the 1960 French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Alain Delon. It…
www.kisafilms.com
Le Cercle Rouge
Gliding almost without speech down the dawn streets of a wet Paris winter, these men in trench coats and fedoras perform a ballet of crime, hoping to win and fearing to die. Some are cops and some are robbers. To smoke for them is as natural as breathing. They use guns, lies, clout, greed and nerve with the skill of a magician who no longer even thinks about the cards. They share a code of honor which is not about what side of the law they are on, but about how a man must behave to win the respect of those few others who understand the code.
www.kisafilms.com
REVIEW: “Coup de Chance” (2024) |
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…
www.kisafilms.com
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE
I feel like I should start out this review by saying I was a big fan of the 2 previous A Quiet Place movies. You can read my reviews here and here. They did a great job establishing atmosphere and creating compelling characters I could breathe with for the moment. However, they are not movies…
www.kisafilms.com
REVIEW: “Something in the Water” (2024) |
The bluntly titled “Something in the Water” hearkens back to those good old days of perusing the horror section of my local mom-and-pop video store, carefully examining the VHS boxes of movies I’d never heard of, in search of some fun late-night entertainment. For better or worse, “Something in the Water” plays a lot like…
www.kisafilms.com
Movie Review – Inside Out 2
“Can you please just give us the Cliff Notes version, should we take our kids to see it and will we enjoy it too?” – sure, you will all have a good time, grab some popcorn safe in the knowledge that Pixar rarely fail, but that is why, whilst I liked Inside Out 2…it was…
www.kisafilms.com
Maestro (2023)
Maestro (2023) is a biographical drama film from sophomore writer-director Bradley Cooper. Cooper also stars in the film as Leonard Bernstein, renowned Broadway composer, following his life and relationships, particularly with his wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan). The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival to strong reviews, and releases in theaters and on Netflix this December.…
www.kisafilms.com
Reacher: Season 1 – TV Review
What we get here is a solid action series that hits all the beats it needs to do, not revolutionary, but still solid. Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime subscription that viewed this series. Reacher Review – When I first heard there would be a new Reacher series, my first impressions […]
www.kisafilms.com
Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream)
By Divina Sethi Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream) is a 2013 Turkish romantic drama. It is based on the tragic true story of struggling poets Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu and Rüştü Onurx, played by (the gorgeous) Kivanc Tatlitug (Kuzey Guney, Ask i memnu, Kurt Seyit ve Sura) and Mert Firat (The Water Diviner, Baska Dilde Ask) […]
Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream)
www.kisafilms.com
The Whale
It’s a movie that you’ll be happy to get up and walk away from, simply for the astounding freedom of being able to get up and walk. Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Whale, takes morbid obesity to its most realistic, destructive level. It’s cringy, it’s sad, it’s unyielding, but more than anything it’s honest. With a […]
www.kisafilms.com
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Martin McDonagh is one of our greatest living playwrights, with his work being widely produced, from the sacred stages of Broadway to the smallest public theatres in Asia, and everywhere in between, his penchant for darkly comical morality tales being the source of many fascinating discussions under the direction of a range of artists who […]
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
www.kisafilms.com
BOXSET REVIEW Your Honor (S1)
The latest US hit crime drama arrives in the UK. How far would you go to save your child? That’s the compelling tagline for Your Honor, the latest US hit show to make it’s way over to the UK. Described as a ‘limited series’ (which at 10 episodes stretches that definition somewhat – more of […]
www.kisafilms.com
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
Style is half the picture. Story is the other half. William Shakespeare’s 17th-century play, The Tragedie of Macbeth, might be one of the greatest stories ever penned. If not, it’s at least one of the most durable. The desire for power, the ruthlessness of rule, and the all-consuming descent into madness that comes with conspiracy and […]
