Sorry Spielbergers. I’m not sure I’m the audience for this kind of stuff. I do admire the thoroughness of the VFX work and how wonderfully the different avatars are rendered, and the whole sequence inside The […]
Predicting the 91st Academy Awards: The Winners
Oh, reader, I am tired. Awards seasons are always draining, but this one has taken the cake. Most of the blame has to go to the Academy’s board and the producers of Sunday’s show for […]
Ralph Breaks the Internet (Moore & Johnston, 2018)
There is a lot going on in Ralph Breaks the Internet outside of its family-friendly messaging about learning to let go of your insecurities and, by extension, the people you’re close to when it’s time for them to move […]
The 2019 Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Live Action (Various, 2017-2018)
Detainment (Lambe, 2018) Good Lord, how am I supposed to review this thing? Tasteless as it is aesthetically, it also seems callous to force people to relive a national tragedy as the Jamie Bulger killing […]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti, Ramsey & Rothman, 2018)
It’s hard for some films to live up to hype. They’re talked up so much and made to seem like the greatest thing, and then when you get around to watching them, they can’t live […]
Border (Abbasi, 2018)
This is quite the mish-mash. A heaping of Scandinavian folklore here, a sprinkle of gritty police procedural there. It ping-pongs between the two genres with intriguing results. Its feet are firmly planted in reality, but […]
Free Solo (Vasarhelyi & Chin, 2018)
I spent a good portion of Free Solo loudly swearing at my walls. Not a heights guy, I’m afraid. Watching someone scale a rock formation without a rope or harness is the kind of cinematic event I […]
The 2019 Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Documentary (Various, 2017-2018)
Black Sheep (Perkins, 2018) I could definitely feel the Moonlight influences in this short documentary about a black boy’s desperate drive to survive after moving to a racist neighbourhood in Essex. The direct address to the camera, […]
The 2019 Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Animated (Various, 2017-2018)
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! […]
Of Fathers and Sons (Derki, 2017)
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 […]
Mirai (Mamoru, 2018)
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 […]
RBG (West & Cohen, 2018)
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 […]
High Flying Bird (Soderbergh, 2019)
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 […]
Velvet Buzzsaw (Gilroy, 2019)
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 […]
At Eternity’s Gate (Schnabel, 2018)
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, […]
The Lonely Film Critic 