We meet them all at a tearful Italian dockside farewell. A family is disembarking for France, looking for better opportunities than their tiny coastal village can provide them. Mamma is crying, but little Lucia is inconsolable. Mother and father area leaving, and taking her kid brother with them. Tweenage Lucia (Marta Castiglia) insists, “I’m all […]
Long Story Short (2021) Love … Blink and you’ll miss it. A romantic comedy that centers around a time anomaly may not be the most original idea to pursue. Indeed, audiences have seen the conceit in the classic film Groundhog Day (1993) and more recently in Richard Curtis’ About Time (2013), but Josh Lawson’s sophomore […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been thirty-three years since Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall let loose in “Coming to America”. That John Landis comedy was a surprise hit that ended up being 1998’s third highest grossing film at the US box office. Over the years it has maintained its legions of fans mainly due to […]
First Glance: “Coming 2 America”
Short running time feature dramas have an obligation to get down to business, to not squander screen time on clutter. There’s no room for extraneous characters, scenes jammed in that don’t advance the plot, needlessly obscuring relationships when the occasional Big Reveal is mystery enough. “Alice Fades Away” is a Southern Gothic thriller with abuse […]
Movie Review: “Alice Fades Away” in this Southern Gothic thriller
“Space Sweepers” is what K-Pop looks like in sci-fi movie form. A not-quite-amusing mashup of “Valerian” and “The Fifth Element,” “Blade Runner” and “Elysium,” it’s the sugariest eye candy Netflix has ever produced. It’s gorgeous, and if you’re all about immersing yourself in a futuristic, apocalyptic, grimy-lived in world, then sit back and soak in […]
Netflixable? Koreans clean up Low Earth Orbit as “Space Sweepers”
Iranian-American director Kourosh Ahari delivers a striking feature film debut with “The Night”, a cerebral slice of psychological horror that impresses as much with its style as it does with its ability to get under your skin. Set within the creepy confines of an old history-rich hotel, “The Night” does what so many other good […]
We’re at that time of year in the UK right now where the rain falls pretty much every day and the sun is nowhere to be seen after 4PM. I don’t know about you, but those kinds of conditions always draw me towards the darker side of cinema. Now isn’t the time for a fluffy […]
Profound, gorgeously shot, and performed, Little Fish is a film that is unforgettable.
LITTLE FISH: A Beautiful, Harrowing Take on Love & Life
Welcome to The Best Movies I’ve Never Seen! This is the part of the blog where I work my way through 100 films I’ve never seen that are generally considered to be great. You’re invited to watch along with me if you can find a copy or find it streaming. So grab some popcorn and let’s […]
One Night in Miami is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. By I. Simon Actors going onto directing features often tends to fascinate me, a reason being that I like seeing whatever they might’ve learned from directors they’ve worked with and how they apply that to their own feature. In the case of One Night […]
Malcolm & Marie premieres February 5 on Netflix. By Ariba Bhuvad Over the course of this year, we’ve seen television and film productions figure out a way to continue their work while following strict COVID-19 safety protocols. But perhaps none are more impressive than director/producer Sam Levinson’s latest Netflix movie, Malcolm & Marie. Levinson wrote, […]
Malcolm & Marie (2021) – Review
Multi-hyphenate Armando Iannucci might be the best working satirist today (all seven seasons of Veep are streaming on HBO Max and DirecTV). His take on the transfer of power in the USSR circa 1953 is so loaded with jokes you have to watch it twice to get it all. From backstabbing to assassination, pajamas and concert recordings, […]
By the time it reached streaming screens in 2021, The Empty Man was so buried that it might as well have never existed. Although filming wrapped in 2017, 21st Century Fox didn’t release it before they were acquired by the Walt Disney Company in early 2019. Realising that this type of horror didn’t really sit […]
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 5 out of 5. Our memory can play tricks on us as we age. We may end up forgetting our loved ones because our brain is no longer able to return the images it previously could. But what will happen in times of global pandemic, when even a young one loses their memory? […]
Film Review: “Little Fish” (2020)
The great François Truffaut was born 89 years ago today, in Paris, France. This French director would go on to prove that cinema is a universal language and it’s hard not to think about what type of films Truffaut would have gone on to make, if not for his tragically early death at the age of 52. As far as I am concerned, today is a holiday dedicated to one of the most important cinematic voices of all time. The […]
6 Shots From 6 Films: Special François Truffaut Edition
“Tazmanian Devil” is a Nigerian-American morality fable that might more accurately have been titled “How I Learned to Stop Preaching and Love the Frat.” It’s about a kid who moves in with his Nigerian pastor father so that he can attend college in Texas. But the child the father always called “My young pastor” gets […]
Movie Review: An African preacher’s son contemplates Fraternity life as a “Tazmanian Devil”
Not to be a broken record, but what are they NOT teaching in film school about editing and pace these days? Is everybody taking their filmmaking cues from limited series (streaming) television? Because up here and Down Under, I’m seeing scores of movies that drift like an ice flow, taking forever to get to whatever […]
Movie Review: “Rage” rage at this pokey thriller from Down Under
Zendaya and John David Washington are two of Hollywood’s rising stars. Both actors had breakout moments in 2020 – Zendaya gave an award winning performance in HBO’s Euphoria and Washington was the lead in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Writer/director Sam Levinson (Euphoria) brings the two stars together in Malcolm & Marie. It’s a simple story that […]
Bereft from some ambiguous tragedy, some half-crazy white lady drops everything to go live on a mountain, totally alone, without being adequately prepared. No phone, no car, nor running water even, this scenario spells disaster to absolutely everyone except her, who persists against all common sense. Edee (Robin Wright) seems not to have thought of […]
Hey everyone! I am writing this having finished the 2021 virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival. I definitely missed my normal festival experience but there were some good parts of being at home. I got to connect with all of my online friends watching movies and the experience wasn’t as grueling as the live […]
Sundance Log 2021 Day 6 (The World to Come, Amy Tan, Users)