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 […]
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018)
Fallout brings little that is new to the Mission: Impossible franchise. It also brings everything that is new. It’s not a contradiction as you would assume. To the first point, it follows similar currents that the other films […]
The ABC Murders (Gabassi, 2018)
Sarah Phelps does not hold Agatha Christie as sacrosanct, that much is for certain. Her fourth BBC adaptation of the Queen of Crime is, like the ones before it, a version stripped of the source […]
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Wilkerson, 2017)
Travis Wilkerson’s family history is not one he is proud of. You would forgive him if he never talked about it in public. I, too, would be apprehensive if I knew one of my closer […]
Vice (McKay, 2018)
It’s been several hours now since I watched Vice, and my opinion of it has dropped as the time passed. In the moment, it is compulsively watchable. You see McKay hitting highs and lows (frequently from […]
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018)
I can’t say I was absolutely loving Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest curio about twenty minutes in. A lot is established very quickly, and Lanthimos seems to jump right into his trademark weirdness rather than let it simmer over. […]
Sollers Point (Porterfield, 2017)
Sollers Point is a slice of life—a life that has taken a wrong turn and is trying to get back on track. We’ve seen films of this kind before, most recently the Safdie brothers’ Good Time from last […]
Sorry to Bother You (Riley, 2018)
The angry and confrontational nature of Sorry to Bother You is its best feature, there’s no question about it. The anti-capitalist, pro-labour mindset being espoused is not filtered or watered down, and Riley’s absurdist touches help make […]
Leave No Trace (Granik, 2018)
What struck me right away about Debra Granik’s latest achievement is its verdant greenness. Most frames hold one hue or another of Nature’s colour, enveloping its two protagonists like a protective shield against discovery. At […]
Western (Grisebach, 2017)
By virtue of its name, a film called Western should have a horse—and it does. It should also have a cowboy, and here’s where things get interesting. There is a cowboy-like figure by the name of Meinhard, […]
Upgrade (Whannell, 2018)
It’s not exactly sophisticated aesthetically or thematically, being another skeptical morality play on the dangers of biotechnological advancements that seek to erase our humanity, but Upgrade is quite a likable bit of pulp. There’s a Frankenstein quality […]
Night is Short, Walk on Girl (Masaaki, 2017)
I commend the gutsy animation style on display in Night is Short, Walk on Girl. Expression is maximized from stem to stern, with emotions and physical movements taking on eye-popping (and hilarious) modes. Over-exaggerating affect and […]
We the Animals (Zagar, 2018)
I did not know We the Animals was based on a book until after the film, which is always a sign that an adaptation did what it needed to do. Jeremiah Zagar’s vision offers a wealth of […]
Green Book (Farrelly, 2018)
Before this film began, I sat in my seat terrified that I was going to like it. Though people whose opinions I follow have liked it, others have panned it for reasons that, to me, […]
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher, 2018)
Alice Rohrwacher won the Best Screenplay citation at Cannes for Happy as Lazzaro, though you could make a strong argument that she deserved more. From what I’ve seen from the unusually strong lineup, the film is […]
The Lonely Film Critic 