Animal Behaviour (Snowden & Fine, 2018) This starts off cute enough, as much as the pairing of disorders with animals is painfully on-the-nose. The leech has separation anxiety! The praying mantis is bad at relationships! Et cetera. There’s not much of an attempt to be clever, which is what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, the…
Kudos to the Academy’s documentary branch for plucking this lesser-known choice out of its shortlist and giving it a top five berth over something more mainstream like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I’m sure it pissed off a mighty contingent of moviegoers (and maybe even the Academy at large, who I’m sure would have coasted Neville’s film…
This is quite the shocking development for me, since I truly thought Mirai was going to be my deserving underdog for the Oscar this year. It’s hard not to root for Japanese anime whenever it’s nominated. It’s usually of much better quality than what the American studios have to offer. But all those nominees were from Studio…
I shall play the role of sober judge while writing this review, because Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want me to do nothing less. And so, while I admit RBG is highly entertaining and teeming with warmth for its subject, it’s also one of those documentaries that turns a Wikipedia entry into an audiovisual presentation. When it’s done…
Steven Soderbergh’s iPhone rush is not over. With Unsane, he made it possible to make an effective thriller with minimal fuss, and now with High Flying Bird, he’s clamped down on his values and refuses to budge an inch. This is, in a way, his revenge against the system that once pushed him aside. This is his Moneyball and,…
If Velvet Buzzsaw was going for incisive critique of the art world’s myriad frivolities, it doesn’t work well. The best it can do is to emulate the kind of dead air that’s generated by those who equate premium connoisseurship with maximum pretension. And even then it can only go so far without looking incompetently cartoonish—and oftentimes it…
Another year, another Vincent van Gogh film. Hot on the heels of last year’s Loving Vincent (a film animated in the style of van Gogh’s paintings), At Eternity’s Gate looks at the final years of the artist’s short life, when he moved to the small villages of Arles and Auvers sur-Oise to paint the natural landscapes. It was in…
Best Picture Gwilym Lee & Rami Malek in BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY — courtesy of 20th Century Fox LOCKS: BlacKkKlansman; The Favourite; Green Book; Roma; A Star is Born. LIKELY: Black Panther; Bohemian Rhapsody; Vice. COIN-TOSS: Cold War; First Man; If Beale Street Could Talk; Mary Poppins Returns. DOUBT IT: At Eternity’s Gate; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Boy Erased;…
What if Guy Maddin remade The Island of Dr. Moreau and it made it super gay? It’d probably be something like Bertrand Mandico’s The Wild Boys, which is an all-out unusual experience. Part coming-of-age narrative, part gay fantasia, part ripping sea yarn, the film follows a group of five boys who get out of hand and commit a…
I’m very fond of the first Incredibles film, and by and large, its sequel is a welcome return. The characters are much the same as we’ve left them, as are their voice actors. Their personalities continue to shine through. Bird’s action sets remain dazzling, full of force and verve that keeps you entertained. And, in a bit…
I’ve been sitting on this film for almost a day now, trying to figure out what to write about it. My mental list just has the words KENDRICK, LIVELY, COSTUMES and DIABOLIQUE scribbled in earnest, and I must say, I loved so much of it. So much of it, in fact, that I fear this…
I respect the issues Beautiful Boy tackles. Drug addiction is a serious epidemic that everyone should inform themselves about. Every individual struggle matters. Lives are at stake, and they can be saved with the understanding of a strong support system and the resources available for recovery. All that goes without saying. As a film, Beautiful Boy unfortunately falls victim…
Mary Poppins Returns begins with a very traditional opening number, before revealing very traditional opening credits with an overture in the vein of the original. It is a clear jump into the past, and an age when filmmaking was ornate in its charms and looked to largess in order to please. Rob Marshall understandably wants to…
I felt some kinship with the lead character of Skate Kitchen. For a while, anyway. Making her introverted and socially awkward was a good decision on the creative team’s part, because it colors the story differently. It’s more tentative and fragile, because Camille’s acceptance into the skater collective is not immediate. She is always depicted as…
Abbas Kiarostami left the world with an unusual goodbye. Not a narrative film, or a film of particular grandeur. Not a film that took us through his beloved Iran, meeting new faces and treading new terrains. No. He left us a film that is experimental in nature, best described as watching pictures come alive in…
