In Theaters
Anora makes it clear why no woman — no man — should marry the son of a Russian oligarch. In Sean Baker’s comedy the title character, played by Mikey Madison, meets Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) at a Manhattan club where she’s a sex worker and after a dizzy weekend he plays Richard Gere to her […]
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In the world of filmmaking, the term “remake” usually comes up as a “double edge” sword within its undertaking and overall execution. For the good part, it allows filmmakers to revisit an old property and reinvent for a modern audiences offering up a new […]
Continue reading “The Crow (2024)”
Con Job (2024) Director – Ian Niles (Lie Hard) Cast – Ian Niles, Menuhin Hart, Dean Edwards, T.L. Flint, Aaron Berg, Julia Claire Schweitzer Plot – Selfish hustler Chris (Niles) employs the support of his best friend Angus (Hart) to try and swindle Chris’s long-term acquittance and August’s brother Tim (Edwards) out of […]
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The media has played a major part in how men perceive women. Through commercials, television series and films, women have been objectified and hypersexualized to sell an ideal form of beauty only desired by men. Thankfully, power dynamics in the workplace have shifted over the years, but there is still a power […]
Continue reading “TIFF ’24: ‘Babygirl’ Review”
It’s basically Heart of Darkness but with a really long road instead of a river. Or Apocalypse Now, if you’re unfamiliar with the above. But it’s not an adaptation, just quite inspired by. Now if we said every movie that consisted of a long journey in war time, we could get silly and say everything […]
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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.
Continue reading “A Different Man (2024)”
A wildly entertaining, gory action-horror-comedy where Nicolas Cage as Dracula is everything you could have imagined. Renfield may seem like the the latest vampire offering from Hollywood, but it’s much more than that. Showcasing a new take on the character of Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and his devoted assistant/familiar R. M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), this comedy-horror […]
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A coming-of-age story told through the lens of a young woman growing up in Silicon Valley, The Book of Jobs intertwines her life to the legacy of Steve Jobs. Victoria Pedretti (Netflix’s You, The Haunting of Hill House) plays the film’s author/narrator, always providing a window of insight to her character’s erratic insecurities. Back in […]
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From a young age Nat Turner (Nate Parker) was always told that he was going to be somebody important in life. By the “blessing of God” he had the ability to read words, which allowed for his slave masters to bring him into their home to learn about the word of God. Fast forward to […]
Continue reading “The Birth of a Nation”
A CLASSIC (YET IMPERFECT) “ONE MAN ARMY” FLICK Within the action film genre, there lies a storied tradition of narrative storytelling that derives from the classic (yet always beloved) “one man army” yarn. There have been many of these films across the many decades of action cinematic history, yet they all roughly remain the […]
Continue reading “The Beekeeper (2024)”
The Bikeriders is a 2024 film based on a book of the same name. The book is a collection of photography and interviews from the 1960’s into the 1970’s following the rise and fall of their bike club. From humble and simple beginnings to the seedier underbelly that creeps in as the story progresses, the […]
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Nick Frost plays a cabbie with an attitude. This film has an interesting aesthetic but fails to do much more with it than the bog standard. I like the idea of a horror film about a cabbie driving down northern country lanes in the dark worrying about ghosts, however, in […]
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Another year, another remake of a recent foreign movie. I managed to see the Danish/Dutch original, also titled Speak No Evil (2022), one night before watching this movie. That movie is a masterclass in tension while it touches on many societal themes (emasculation, politeness, power dynamics). Long story short, I enjoyed my time with it, […]
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Let me clarify something – I have been rooting for Megalopolis ever since I first learned about it. Written as a passion project by Francis Ford Coppola himself, entirely financed by him, he also directed it… If one of the cinema’s best directors to have ever picked up a camera wants to tell a story […]
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Champion of the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Anorais an absolute wonder of a film that surpasses expectations. Written and directed by Sean Baker, Anora is his best film yet and is unconventional in the way it combines comedy, drama, and romantic genres. The writing is vivid, and the story leaves audiences breathless. This is the romantic comedy masterpiece the world needs. It displays how young love includes many moments to cherish while also navigating obstacles when things […]
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The film “Conclave,” directed by Edward Berger and set for release on October 25, 2024, presents a mysterious narrative centered around the selection of a new pope. While it features strong performances and intriguing moments, its slow pacing and lack of a satisfying conclusion left the reviewer feeling disappointed, rating it a 6/10.
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Small Things Like These – Film Review by Frank L Director Tim Mielants Writers Enda Walsh, Claire Keegan Stars Cillian Murphy, Patrick Ryan, Peter Claffey In 1985, Ireland was on the verge of a tectonic change. The hegemony of the religious over all aspects of Irish life was beginning to crack with, for example, the […]
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The Lighthouse is going to be a movie you’ll either love or hate. You’ll either love it for its surreal imagery, strange story, isolating setting, all over the place tone, eerie filmmaking, crazy acting, or all of the above. Or you’ll hate it for these exact reasons. It’s one of the strangest […]
There’ve been a few attempts, over the decades, to rewrite the history of Billy Wilder’s 1964 clunker “Kiss Me, Stupid.” It’s “underrated” thanks to a winning Dean Martin as “Dino” (Dean Martin) performance, worth re-assessing because of a risque late scene Wilder was forced to edit out, somehow worthy of elevation because of its satiric […]
Classic Film Review: Billy Wilder’s “Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)” reconsidered
When I first became interested in classic film, I’d stalk the forums on tcm.com in an attempt to seek out movies to watch. Anytime the subject of tearjerkers came up, it seemed like the first and most discussed movie was a film that would likely have otherwise flown under my radar: the 1941 drama “Penny Serenade,” directed […]
Holiday Classics: “Penny Serenade” (1941)
