Directed by Sean Penn I've had a hard time getting Christopher McCandless out of my head this week. While in a Wisconsin cabin I picked up Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, learning in more detail about McCandless' journey which I had first come to know about upon the film's release over a decade ago. Armed with … Continue reading Into the Wild (2007)
Month: August 2019
Faults (2014)
Directed by Riley Stearns A sad, sad man attempts to deprogram a cult member in Faults, a film that accomplishes a lot over the course of a few nights in a small motel room. He is Ansel Roth (Leland Orser), and the subject of his interrogation is Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Pretty quickly the power dynamics … Continue reading Faults (2014)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
Directed by Paul Mazursky Bob & Carol (Robert Culp, Natalie Wood) have just gone to a spiritually-inclined retreat. When they come back they're different, and it irks Ted & Alice (Elliot Gould, Dyan Cannon). The divide between them will to some extent be erased by film's end as the four of them climb into bed … Continue reading Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
Sword of Trust (2019)
Directed by Lynn Shelton There's something very Jim Jarmusch-ian about Lynn Shelton's Sword of Trust. Though her heavily improvised film is much more broadly comic than a typical Jarmusch film, the characters' unlikely and quirky journey, with its twists turns and even dramatic let downs, feels... well Jarmusch-ian. It's not so much that the plot is … Continue reading Sword of Trust (2019)
Pet Sematary (2019)
Directed by Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer Pet Sematary is a grim, self-serious and nearly identical remake of the odd 1989 film of the same name. I'm surprised to find such rigid devotion to the source material considering that older film was kind of atrocious. In fact this film, while not exactly bad, is similarly atrocious. … Continue reading Pet Sematary (2019)
Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)
Directed by Rob Letterman Detective Pikachu is just about exactly what it sounds like. It's a detective thriller in a world with pokémon, and when you put those two things together you get something a lot like Zootopia. It's a diverse environment, between creatures and animals, and it turns out the bad guys are infecting these … Continue reading Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez Alita: Battle Angel takes place on what looks to be the flimsy sets of the original Total Recall (1990). These are crowded, tiny streets bustling with improbable activity. There are street markets, street urchins, bounty hunters and youth with reckless abandon. Another factor making the diverse community all the more diverse is … Continue reading Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is a sentimental, Linklater-esque nostalgia dream tinged at the edges with a brooding darkness. These are all qualities absorbed through observation rather than any dictated narration, with the sun-bleached scene established through images of characters driving peacefully through Los Angeles, listening to the radio and … Continue reading Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
Silent Rage (1982)
Directed by Michael Miller Yeah so Silent Rage is seriously indebted to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). In some ways it feels like a straight ripoff, complete with the unkillable psychopath, the obsessive but morally compromised therapist who tracks him and first person voyeuristic perspective. But then you add in Chuck Norris to all of that. After a … Continue reading Silent Rage (1982)
Stuber (2019)
Directed by Michael Dowse Stuber is kind of fun, a lot of fun actually. It's easy to poke fun at based on the trailer and one of those titles that alludes to a pun based on a character's name, but forget all of that, don't even watch the trailer, just go see it. There aren't … Continue reading Stuber (2019)
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