Film Reviews
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry Offers a Clear Portrait of Teenage Life: Review
The Pitch: When Billie Eilish was 13 years old, she posted a video of herself singing her song “Ocean Eyes”. Three years later, in 2018, she was already on a fast path to superstardom, and director R.J. Cutler somehow knew to pick up his camera. This is the starting point to his Apple TV+ documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. Cutler, whose resume includes documentaries such as The September Issue and Belushi, couldn’t have predicted the kind of year he was about to capture. By circling around Eilish’s 18th year, Cutler documented the writing, recording, release, and reaction of her first full-length album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. He then continued to capture Eilish’s subsequent sold-out shows and festival appearances, radio and magazine interviews, and ...
Tom Holland Is Miscast In the Ambitious, Messy Cherry: Review
The Pitch: “Sometimes I wonder if life is wasted on me,” Cherry (Tom Holland) drawls wryly to us, godlike and incessant in his narration. When we meet him, he’s holding up a bank, and it’s not the first time. But how would a nice young man fall into such disrepute? From there, we rewind to see the life choices Cherry has made that led him to this point — from his furtive romance with a young classmate named Emily (Ciara Bravo) to the torment and torture of his days as an Army medic in Iraq, to the subsequent opioid addiction that would lead him to a life of bank-robbing to fund his drug habit. CHERK ‘Em If You Got ‘Em: In many ways, it’s going to be hard for Cherry to overcome its first real brush with public notoriety — a strangely-glitched version of the poster that messed...
Netflix’s I Care a Lot Is a Brutal Indictment of the American HealthCare System: Review
The Pitch: Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) cares a lot. She’s the legal guardian of dozens of elderly people who desperately need her help. This “care” comes in the form of decision making powers regarding her client’s finances and medical treatment. With a simple doctor’s recommendation and signature from a judge, she essentially has the legal right to decimate the lives and accumulated wealth of anyone who falls into her trap. But Marla’s newest client, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), is more than she seems and may end up causing the conniving entrepreneur’s downfall. Writer/director J Blakeson’s new Netflix film is a black comedy that feels infuriatingly familiar given the rampant authoritarian greed and hypocrisy we see daily. Dressed up as a stylish thriller, I Care a Lot is a brutal ...
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar Deserved to Go to Sold-Out Theaters: Review
The Pitch: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo reunite as screenwriters a decade after Bridesmaids, this time co-starring as the eponymous leads in a new raunchy comedy. Is the magic still there for another hugely successful laugh riot? A Movie That Oughta Be in Theaters: Movies like Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar are a good reason why it remains heartbreaking that movie theaters are mostly ghost towns these days. The new comedy from Lionsgate Pictures was originally intended for theatrical release last summer, and there’s little doubt that it would be best served by playing in front of a large, boisterous crowd. It’s not to suggest that Barb and Star is bad; anything but. Yet it’s undeniably the kind of film that would work at the height of its powers with a ready audience gobbling up every ...
Judas and the Black Messiah Puts a Nostalgic Lens On a Modern-Day Struggle: Review
The Pitch: The early morning of December 4th, 1969 served as an exclamation point for this country’s most tumultuous decade. The assassinations of Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; became jarring reminders that the virtues of morality, peace, and equality would never supersede the ideology that the United States was built on – racism. At 21 years old, Fred Hampton’s life may have been cut short, but his legacy continues to live on. Directed by Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah is not only a film about the political killing of one of the movement’s most promising figures, but an exploration of the inner turmoil plaguing the man who set him up – and the mindset of many others like him. In a powerful montage, the film opens with footage focused on quotes and spee...
Robin Wright Tries to Ground Herself in the Sumptuous But Hollow Land: Review
The Pitch: Edee (Robin Wright) wants to get away from it all — life, family, civilization. She’s mourning something, or rather, escaping, but we don’t know precisely what. Flashbacks to a husband (Warren Christie), a son, and a concerned sister (Kim Dickens) give us plenty of clues, though. Packing up a U-Haul and driving across the country from Chicago to a remote cabin in Quincy, Wyoming, Edee makes it clear that she wants to be left alone to fend for herself. Edee sends the truck and U-Haul away, leaving only herself and a sparse collection of canned food to fill her new home. Naturally, the city slicker doesn’t make it long before weather, starvation, and dangerous wildlife force the intervention of a kind stranger named Miguel (Demián Bichir), who helps her back on her feet and t...
CODA Hits All The Right Notes: Sundance 2021 Review
This review is part of our Sundance 2021 coverage. The Pitch: 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) doesn’t have your typical adolescence: the child of a Massachusetts fishing family, she splits her time between the awkwardness of high school and helping her family out on the boat, doing her best to help her family keep the business afloat amid union disputes and predatory fish buyers who try to take advantage of them. There’s another complication: Ruby is the only hearing member of her family, the rest of whom — father Frank (Troy Kotsur), mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) — are deaf. This places added pressure on her as the one person who can translate ASL to the world around them; she’s inexplicably tethered to them. Of course, Ruby soon discovers she has dreams o...
Saint Maud Is Wholly Terrifying: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: Maud (Morfydd Clark) does palliative care for a private healthcare facility and becomes the maid for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former avant garde dancer and choreographer. Maud has found God following a traumatic event at work, hinted at through flashbacks and haunting visions, and has now taken a pious approach to work that borders on fanaticism. Faced with antagonism from Amanda, Maud slowly spirals more and more into religious fueled actions and experiences — talked to and touched by God — that will lead to a string of actions that have an irreversible impact and her and those around her. This Cast and Crew Are Doing the Lord’s Work: British writer and director Rose Glass boldly shows off her ch...
The Reckoning Is Neil Marshall’s Biggest Whiff Yet: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: It’s late 17th century England, and although the plague is no longer running as rampant as it once was, a new pandemic has taken over: witchcraft. The era of scapegoating women for anything and everything is prevalent and the main conflict in The Reckoning. Grace Haverstock’s husband has committed suicide, himself afflicted with the plague, and has left Grace and their newborn daughter to care for their small farm. When she falls behind on rent, her landlord attacks her and suggests she make payment with sexual favors. Grace spurns his advances. With his fragile male ego damaged, he accuses her of witchcraft, and Grace is put into bondage and undergoes a series of physical and psychological torture...
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga Steal the Screen In Passing: Sundance 2021 Review
This review is part of our Sundance 2021 coverage. The Pitch: Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, Passing follows Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga), two mixed-race women who can walk through life passing for white. While Clare revels in this, Irene wears it with disdain, and when the duo reunite, all hell breaks loose up in Harlem. The Standout: It’s like director Rebecca Hall knew 2021 would be the perfect time to premiere her debut film at Sundance. Her first feature tackles the issue of colorism–something that’s so pervasive and transparent now more than ever. It’s a subject that’s previously been explored in films such as Queen, Imitation of Life, School Daze, and Skin, but Passing stands out by compounding the challenges of colorism and the violence of the...
Viggo Mortensen’s Falling Is Exhausting: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: In Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut, gay Air Force pilot John (Mortensen) struggles to care for his ailing conservative father, Willis (Lance Henriksen). Malcontent and never afraid to shy away from a racist, homophobic or sexist rant, Willis offends everyone from John’s husband Eric (Terry Chen) to his daughter Sarah (Laura Linney), all while he slips in and out of flashbacks, including his two marriages to wives Gwen (Hannah Gross) and Jill (Bracken Burns). Grumpy Old Man: Early in Falling, as the relationship between John and Willis is being established, it’s clear that Henriksen is exceptional in the role. Willis is the kind of curmudgeonly character whose edges are too often ...
PVT CHAT Gets Kink Right: Review
This review was originally part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Jack (Peter Vack) is a lonely boy in the big city. He lives in a rundown apartment—the only kind anyone can afford in New York City–where his windows are duct-taped over and his day-to-day involves either bowls of Maruchan ramen or online poker games. But he also engages in BDSM scenes with a number of cam girls, and one in particular has caught his eye. Enter Scarlet (Julia Fox), who dominates Jack from afar, making him a human ashtray as smoke billows out from her big beautiful lips. As time ticks away and more and more money is dropped, Jack and Julia begin to connect on a deeper level, a connection that sets both parties up for twists that audiences will never see coming. I’ll Always Love You New York: W...
