Film Reviews
Steve McQueen’s Mangrove Is a Courtroom Masterpiece: Review
This review originally ran in September 2020 as part of our coverage of the 2020 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: In 1968, Notting Hill was a slowly-growing hub of Black culture in London, filled with West Indian immigrants of various stripes who congregated at Frank Crichlow’s (Shaun Parkes) Mangrove Restaurant… Please click the link below to read the full article. Steve McQueen’s Mangrove Is a Courtroom Masterpiece: Review Clint Worthington You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
Hillbilly Elegy Is Basically a Demo Reel for a Young Republican’s Congressional Bid: Review
The Pitch: Legal scholar and author James Donald Bowman (pen name J.D. Vance) was the product of a Kentucky-and-Ohio-bred upbringing. And he’s just got something to say about that. Hillbilly Elegy is Ron Howard and Vanessa Taylor’s adaptation of Vance’s book about his life in Appalachia, specifically how a.) he defeated Southern legacies of “economic anxiety” or whatever the hell that means to b.) grow up into a Yalie. (You can just hear the “now I’m just a Southern Lawyer in the big city” maxims already, can’t you?) Vance is portrayed in dueling narratives, as a young fuckup in Kentucky (Owen Asztalos) and as a struggling law school student (Gabriel Basso) trying to take care of his ma back home. Both stories are marked by his strained relationships with his mother and his “Mamaw”. His mo...
Fatman Is Another Lump of Coal for Mel Gibson: Review
The Pitch: Mel Gibson is the Fatman. No, the name isn’t a reference to the A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. It’s one of the surlier nicknames for Santa Claus, played by Gibson as a disheveled, world-weary man named Chris Cringle, just trying to make ends meet in a world losing its Christmas Cheer©. If you feel you came into possession of Fatman by mistake, and would like to learn more about the “Fat Man” portions of the Manhattan Project, safely visit your local library or consult Wikipedia. Or perhaps watch Roland Jaffé’s Fat Man and Little Boy, a 1989 film about the invention of the atomic bomb by desperate American scientists. Why waste precious bits of the word count talking about Fat Man and Little Boy? Because I seriously have no idea what the hell to do with the latest lame-ass G...
David Fincher’s Mank Is a Dense, Technically Marvelous Ode to Old Hollywood: Review
The Pitch: Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) was the script whisperer of the 1930s — at the height of the studio system, he was one of its most sought-after names, punching up many of the era’s most famous films with his signature wit and effortlessly fast-paced dialogue. But he was also a man plagued by personal foibles, a hefty drinking problem, and the struggles of being a card-carrying socialist in one of the most capitalistic industries in American history. In the spring of 1940, Mankiewicz — but please call him “Mank” — was tapped to pen the script for Hollywood’s most famous piece of outsider art: Orson Welles’ sprawling, ambitious epic Citizen Kane. Recovering from a car crash in a private estate with a helpful nurse named Rita (Lily Collins) and a 90-day deadline to get...
The Dark and the Wicked Is Visceral, Bleak, and the Perfect Horror Movie for 2020: Review
This review originally ran as part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Two siblings venture out to their remote family farm, where their father is slowly dying and their mother is unraveling from grief. Something else is happening, though. There’s a darkness behind the sorrow, an evil slowly poisoning the soil… Something Wicked This Way Comes: Grief is on the mind. Thanks to our ensuing pandemic — and really, the collateral damage of our current administration — we’re a populace poisoned with misery. So much so that it’s become an appendage of our day-to-day, something we’ve had to deal with to check in and check out without losing our minds. In a timely twist of fate, grief has also informed some of this year’s most affecting films, be it Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods or Nat...
The Craft: Legacy Is an Uneven Love Letter to the Weirdos: Review
The Pitch: Writer and and director Zoe Lister-Jones returns with the long-awaited sequel to 1996’s The Craft. Similar to its predecessor, this story follows three teen witches looking for a fourth to complete their circle. Enter new girl in town, Lily (Cailee Spaeny), whose mother (Michelle Monaghan) has just moved in with her new boyfriend (David Duchovny) and his three teenage sons. What begins as a coming-of-age tale eventually transforms into a mystery with ill-defined stakes. When Witches Go Riding: The Craft has a complicated legacy to reckon with seeing how it not only inspired a generation of girls to explore the occult, but also provided important representation in the casting of Rachel True as Rochelle. In more recent years, however, the film has been re-evaluated for its questio...
Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You Documentary Sheds Light on What Drives The Boss: Review
The Pitch: It’s not every day that you record the 20th studio album of your half-century career in music. When that time does come, it’s worth memorializing. Such is the case with Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, the new making-of documentary now streaming on Apple TV+. Shot last November at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey during a four-day recording session with the E Street Band, the film does more than simply capture a veteran band making a hard job look easy. It also gives Springsteen a chance to expand upon and espouse the thoughts on legacy, time, and the creative process that animate the new record’s material. New Jersey in Winter: While it’s unlikely that Springsteen and his crew opted for a late fall recording date to maximize the potential for cinematic poignancy, that ...
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Lampoons an America Almost Too Ugly for Laughs: Review
The Pitch: Sacha Baron Cohen’s trojan horse/folk hero Borat Sagdiyev returns to America. Is nice. After disgracing his native Kazakhstan as the result of his successful 2006 motion picture, the once-famous journalist is asked to curry favor with President McDonald Trump’s good friend, United States Vice President Mike Pence (“Michael Pennis”) in the form of a gift: an animal. Borat must give Johnny the Monkey, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Culture and No. 1 porn star, to Pence. But there’s a snag. Inside Johnny’s crate is a stowaway named Tutar (Maria Bakalova), Borat’s 15-year-old daughter. Borat decides to offer his daughter to Pennis instead, a notorious “pussy hound” who can’t even be in the same room as women. When the plan fails — and we can explain why in a moment — Borat and Tutar, with...
Shudder’s The Mortuary Collection Offers Halloween Horror With a Morbid Mean Streak: Review
This review originally ran as part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: “The world is made of stories…” and they are left behind by the dead. Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) is an aging mortician tasked with not only caring for the bodies of his recently deceased clients but for the stories of their deaths. These he collects and keeps in the massive library of his sinister and dilapidated mortuary. After officiating the funeral of a child, he meets Sam (Caitlin Custer), a young woman looking for a job. Her interview takes a turn for the macabre as she asks Montgomery to scare her with his tales, setting the stage for this spooky anthology. It was a Dark and Stormy Night… Set in the vague past, The Mortuary Collection feels like Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark for twenty-some...
Netflix’s Rebecca Is Haunted by Better Adaptations: Review
The Pitch: As recalled in Daphne du Mauier’s famed 1938 Gothic novel of the same name, our narrator and young, nameless lady’s companion (Lily James) meets, falls in love with, and marries a wealthy, older Englishman and widower, Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), while on holiday in Monte Carlo and returns with him to his lavish Cornish estate, Manderley. She soon begins to notice the long, profound shadow her husband’s recently dead wife, Rebecca, hauntingly casts over Maxim; family and acquaintances; household servants, including cold, austere housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas); and even the animals. As the second Mrs. de Winter grows increasingly frustrated with the strange power her predecessor possesses, even from beyond a watery grave, she slowly begins to learn the truth ...
Michelle Pfeiffer Goes from Catwoman to Cat Lady in the Messy French Exit: NYFF Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a wealthy widow in her mid-60s, with a tongue as silver as the spoon in the mouth of her hanger-on son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges). Unfortunately, her gravy train is about to run out as her financial planner informs her she’s completely broke — a scenario he’s warned the mercurial Frances about for nearly a decade. Without skipping a beat, she illegally sells her worldly possessions and drags Malcolm (along with their cat, Small Frank) with her to Paris, along with the remainder of their funds. Together, they occupy her friend Joan’s (Susan Coyne) apartment and figure out what their next steps are — or, in the case of Frances, her last ones. Lost in Translation: At f...
The Wolf of Snow Hollow Adds Coen-Style Humor to the Werewolf Genre: Beyond Fest Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: In a small and snow-covered mountain town, a series of murders suddenly create a sizable body count, leaving the townsfolk frightened and the humble police force confused. When a rumor runs through town that a werewolf is behind the kills, coinciding with full moons and savagely torn apart corpses, John Marshall (Jim Cummings) is suddenly tasked with proving that lycanthropes are a campfire tale. This proves difficult when it’s added to his long list of pre-existing duties, such as taking care of his teenage daughter and watching over his sickly father. It’s Like Fargo With Werewolves: Jim Cummings is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to film. No, seriously, the guy has dipped his toes into everything. Writin...
