The Kid Who Would Be King (Joe Cornish, 2019). After his feature directorial debut, Attack the Block, Joe Cornish seemed positioned to jostle with a few others — including Edgar Wright, one of that film’s producers — for the distinction … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up —The Kid Who Would Be King; Total Recall; The Old Man and the Gun
Though I’m going to go ahead and follow my usual practice of typing out a bunch of words, I think the ideal way to evaluate the new film Elle is with an artfully constructed infographic. This helpful guide would take individual moments from the film and measure whether their inner being is guided more by the aura of French cinema or by the ruddy instincts of director Paul Verhoeven. The scene in which a woman confronts the new, young lover of her ex-husband and the two of them conclude that, with the tension of an initial encounter out of the … Continue reading Now Playing: Elle
Many of the reviews to be shared in this space will come from my time as co-host and co-producer of The Reel Thing, the WWSP-FM radio show where I first took a spin a genuine film critic. There were a few other outlets that deigned to distribute my words, the most natural of which was the student newspaper, with offices directly adjacent to the radio station that was my most consistent collegiate home. I’d actually had an earlier stretch as a writer for the The Pointer, penning a terrible, under-conceived column in the first semester of my freshman year. Thankfully … Continue reading From the Archive: Basic Instinct
Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, 2008). in the realm of computer animated features, there is Pixar and then there’s everyone else. Others have reaped box office success, but there’s an broad, enduring gap when it comes to artistry. Dreamworks Animation is arguably the outfit working most diligently to cross the divide. Kung Fu Panda doesn’t accomplish that, in part because the storytelling is as by-the-numbers as it gets, but it does boast a visual sense that is smoothly well-realized, generally engaging, and, at times, very striking. In particular, the sequences involving the elaborate prison created for the … Continue reading She’s making movies on location, she don’t know what it means
Coffee for Two 