An interview with actress Kathryn Prescott on her new short film, “Dear You”, which addresses the opioid epidemic.
All in Film
An interview with actress Kathryn Prescott on her new short film, “Dear You”, which addresses the opioid epidemic.
In ordinary circumstances, it would be very hard to recommend a movie that only gets good after two full hours, and flirts with badness for much of its runtime. But this is no ordinary movie, and as you’ve already spent - I shit you not - 38 hours with this group of characters, you may as well suck it up and deal with some awkward pacing and jokes that don’t quite land. All of this glorious mess culminates in a stunning sequence in which the hoariest of comic book tropes is turned into a moment of rare cinematic beauty.
You Were Never Really Here, the latest film to call into question what exactly Joaquin Phoenix must be like at, say, a cocktail party, is an update of Taxi Driver for our own paranoid time. Phoenix, in a sentence I may as well just copy for future reference, inhabits his role with wounded humanity, creating a character who somehow stands apart from the other unpredictable loners he’s played before. There are many ways to tell this type of story, but only one of them, the approach director Lynne Ramsay takes here, delivers a film of such brutal grace.
In spite of its director and star, not a single character “Jims” the camera in A Quiet Place. You'll forget all about The Office as you're thrown into the bleak world of the Abbott family, who live in almost complete silence as to not attract the violent creatures, who respond only to sound. The silence overwhelms. I spent most of the movie holding back tears as I scratched my son's arm while clutching my sweater to my face. A glass of wine may ease you along. Also, props for casting an actual deaf actress, the phenomenal Millicent Simmonds.
Ready Player One is too well-crafted to be as bad as anticipated, but too clueless about its own subject matter to be as good as its occasional flashes of brilliance. I can’t imagine how amazing it was to be in the room when some poor underling explained video games to Steven Spielberg, but yes, I can, because the movie explains them to an audience who already understands. A likeable cast suggests the movie might end up more than the sum of its many references, but ultimately, as with all pop culture, you’ll take away whatever you brought in with you.
Now that I’ve seen Flower, I have even more appreciation for last year’s Lady Bird. Both are coming-of-age stories about a young woman trying to figure out her direction in life. But Lady Bird has something that Flower does not: Greta Gerwig. This film needed a writer/director with a singular voice and real life experience. Flower was written by three men that may or may not have ever spent more than ten minutes with a seventeen year-old girl. It’s a shame, really, because Zoey Deutch does the best she can with the material she’s given as our leading lady. In the end, much like her character, Flower is confused mess.
Gabriel Ricard takes on Netflix's new crapfest movie model and Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time in his latest Captain Canada column!
M.G. Poe takes a critical, but loving, look at the Netflix series One Day at a Time, focusing on where the show succeeds and where it can still improve in its representation of Cuban culture.
His single-minded determination to find someone who shares his Defining Characteristic represents one of the main problems in reducing a human being to words on a screen: it leads to a focus on superficial things that ultimately mean nothing.
An old tagline for the website you’re visiting was “leave you snark at the doorstep”, and I can give you no better advice in approaching Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time. DuVernay and Disney give the classic children’s novel a modern polish, and shift the book’s heavily Christian imagery into a more, let’s say, “Oprah-esque” spirituality (it helps to have a 50-foot version of Winfrey hanging around). It’s far from a perfect film, but something does not have to be perfect to be beautiful, which, in case you're not paying attention, is the message the movie is offering you.
If you have ever stood in front of a painting hoping you could step into that world, you now can. The world’s first fully oil - painted movie, Loving Vincent (Van Gogh) allows us to inhabit this world in his chosen medium. Through flashbacks, Van Gogh's contemporaries and painted subjects come to terms with their personal responsibility in his life and somewhat mysterious death. Van Gogh’s life was passionate but distorted both emotionally and by his perception of light and color. At the end, we can ask ourselves if would we have treated Vincent any differently.
I would tell you not to go see this movie, which is a very disappointing and unnecessary sequel to a very amazing original film, but by the time you read this it probably won't be in theaters anymore. The only thing saving it from an F is the pool scene and that's only because of the use of a Jim steinman song. Don't waste your money. Not even worth 100 words to be honest.
Writer/director Cory Finley's impressive debut strikes me as an exploitation film in search of a soul. But that's a good thing. His script and direction perfectly mimic the sociopathic tendencies of his lead characters, who are portrayed precisely by Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke, respectively. Anton Yelchin also joins in on the fun in full scene-stealing mode, as he did so often. Thoroughbreds is being compared to other films, but Finley's style doesn't strike me as derivative; especially when it comes to his pitch-black sense of humor and his wonderful use of short-sided cinematography. For better or worse, this 28-year old playwright could be our next Martin McDonagh.
Gabriel Ricard talks Oscars, Black Panther and classic noir cinema in the latest edition of Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo!
Brian O’Malley’s (Let Us Prey) sophomore effort cements his reputation as a horror director with old school tendencies. Like Ti West’s The Innkeepers, The Lodgers relies heavily on character, deliberate pacing, and atmosphere, even though the payoff is poorly executed. Set in 1920s Ireland, twins Rachel (a standout Charlotte Vega) and Edward’s family estate is haunted by a presence which imposes three rules upon them: be in bed by midnight; never let a stranger enter; don’t try escaping, otherwise the other’s life will be endangered. Viewers demanding visceral, bloody thrills will be disappointed; others, like myself, may be briefly entranced.
It’s a miracle how effective The Housemaid remains after being at the mercy of Vietnam’s film censorship board. Set on a 1953 Indochina rubber plantation, a young woman named Linh is hired as a housemaid but falls in love with the owner, Captain Laurent, whose dead wife haunts the plantation. Some writing and pacing issues thankfully don’t detract from its strong acting, set design, and chilly atmosphere. Currently, director Derek Nguyen is arranging a remake set in America’s Reconstruction-Era Deep South, which will potentially feature an entire African-American cast and crew. Now that is a remake I want to see.
It pains me to imagine how many great sci-fi movies we'd have from writer/director Alex Garland if he escaped Danny Boyle's grasp sooner. Ex Machina set the standard, but Annihilation is a much more ambitious beast. The film's genetic makeup is all kinds of screwy. It's H.R. Giger fused with Joseph Conrad. For each intellectually stimulating sequence, there’s a terrifying one closely on its heels. It’s a thrilling ride that hits a few bumps towards the end, but Garland deserves massive praise for bringing this much audacity to the mainstream. It’s hard-nosed, adult Science Fiction with a capital "S".
Ryan Coogler has proven time and time again that he understands the delicate relationship between a black man and their son. An otherworldly connection, sharing both the strengths and demons throughout the bloodline. This aspect of parenthood is explored in Black Panther. Aside from the nuances, amazing plot twists, and sheer entertainment of the film, there are several call backs for the trained eye: a brief Lion King moment, Angela Basset giving us Storm vibes, and jokes that only the Black community would appreciate. Surpasses all expectations. History in the making. Top five Marvel film of all time. Wakanda forever.
There’s a reason why The Cloverfield Paradox, the third entry in the Cloverfield franchise, was dumped onto Netflix. It’s not that The Cloverfield Paradox is necessarily awful, either. This sci-fi adventure about a team of scientists trapped in another dimension is simply too forgettable, employing a bag of sci-fi tropes and moments of “unexplained weirdness” to fill its hour-and-42-minute runtime. The Cloverfield Paradox does have moments of competency, but it strives to go nowhere. Once the bag of tricks runs out, so does the film.
I believe it was Virgil who once said, “Beware of [movie producers] bearing gifts.”