The following should be an obvious point: The setting of a movie is important. By this, I don’t mean that only films settled into certain locales can have value. It’s that the setting — whatever the setting — should inform … Continue reading Now Playing — Support the Girls
In The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Chloë Grace Moretz plays the title character, a high school girl who is caught outside the homecoming dance making out with one of her female friends (Quinn Shephard) in a parked car. Cameron’s aunt … Continue reading Now Playing — The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Across thirty-plus years of commercially released feature films, director Spike Lee has rarely lacked for ambition. Near-perfect or fatally flawed, his efforts are routinely packed with ideas, manifesting as narrative deconstruction, wildly inventive manipulations of cinematic technique, or heated social … Continue reading Now Playing — BlacKkKlansman
If the main problem with modern studio comedies is a tendency towards unwieldy narrative sprawl in the name of cramming in every mildly amusing aside captured on set, director Susanna Fogel should first be credited for her uncommon discipline with … Continue reading Now Playing — The Spy Who Dumped Me
Since launching as a fairly conventional action series with a couple gimmicky elements primarily included as a nod to its original network television source material, the Mission: Impossible series of films have progressed as an escalating dare. Over six films, … Continue reading Now Playing — Mission: Impossible — Fallout
Boots Riley could have given himself an easier task for a first feature film. Sorry to Bother You is first and foremost a satire, and few other comedic forms are more perilous onscreen. The deployment of pure absurdity might seem … Continue reading Now Playing — Sorry to Bother You
As the superhero comic book publisher with the firmest commitment to continuity, Marvel occasionally felt obligated to start an issue with a clarifying caption that placed the story therein on the vast fictional timeline. Something on the page that’s not … Continue reading Now Playing — Ant-Man and the Wasp
Incredibles 2 essentially begins at the precise point its exemplary predecessor ends. The Parr family, super-powered individuals who have largely refrained from costumed heroism because of legal prohibitions, spring into action against the villainous Underminer (voiced by John Ratzenberger), who … Continue reading Now Playing — Incredibles 2
There are plenty of gruesome elements to go around in Hereditary, the feature film debut of writer-director Ari Aster. As the title implies, though, the most unsettling portions of the film center on the way family can weigh on a … Continue reading Now Playing — Hereditary
Back when I first started penning movie reviews — not just as a personal hobby, but to foist upon Central Wisconsin radio listeners — I made an effort to approach each cinematic offering purely as its own entity, doing the … Continue reading Now Playing — Solo: A Star Wars Story
Coffee for Two 