Tag: Cinema
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A Cure for Wellness: Crimson Peak for boys
It took me a while to get the measure of A Cure for Wellness, until it struck me, this film has the Crimson Peak problem. It’s been advertised as a horror film, and sure, there’s some scary moments in there, but it’s not striving for horror. In the same way that Crimson Peak was actually…
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Moonlight: Watch with Empathy
I mean, I’m really not interested in any take on Moonlight that isn’t coming from a queer black person. It’s a beautiful evocation of a life that comes so far from mine that I feel fully inequipped to deal. Queerness comes pretty easy of my tongue, but that small-town, middle-class, white-British queerness. How can it…
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20th Century Women: Hanging With the Gals
At 20th Century Women’s best moments it’s got this real chill hangout movie vibe. A loose, easygoing slide that puts the audience into the headspace that Santa Barbara probably deserves. Work probably does get done there but right now it feels like a million miles away. The punk scene’s still alive, Reagan is not yet…
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Hidden Figures: A Film Worthy of that Pun
I only got the pun in Hidden Figures’ title as I was leaving the theatre. At that point it hit me like such a ton of bricks that all my bones simultaneously broke and I melted into a puddle on the floor. I’m not sure if that means it’s a good pun or a bad…
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The Founder: McDonalds The Great
The Founder is a capitalist nightmare. I mean, the events of the film are certainly, but the film could have been about it without actually being it. The film wants us to take some certain things for granted. That McDonalds is right, that McDonalds is a good, and that McDonalds was inevitable. Don’t see that…
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John Wick: Chapter 2: All About the Craft
John Wick: Chapter 2 wants you to think it’s not camp. It tries and tries and tries, with its serious faced men and its brutal action. But high class gentleman assassins? Lavish hotels serving as organizational safehouses? Sly deals executed with a wink and a handshake? Oh, it’s camp as all fuck. After retrieving his…
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The Great Wall: A Communist Spectacle
I am woefully underprepared to talk about Chinese film, it’s a huge whole in my knowledge i am desperately trying to fill up. Now we see the release of the most expensive, expansive Chinese film of all time and it’s hard to know what to make of it. Is it an attempt to position China…
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Fences: August Wilson’s August Play
Fences feels like an accomplished play. Everything that I’m sure shone throughout the various stagings of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning classic shines here. Under Denzel Washington’s direction though it never feels like it quite makes that leap to a film. That’s not to suggest inferiority by no means, I’ve never seen it staged (and…
A Grand Quiet 