Directed by Danny Boyle Yesterday is remarkably delightful. It's a film with a simple premise that doesn't necessarily deliver on all the narrative promises of that premise, and yet it is just so likable because the performers themselves are so likable. Jack Malick (Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician with a loyal manager, Ellie (Lily … Continue reading Yesterday (2019)
Notting Hill (1999)
Directed by Roger Michell I can't find it right now, but there's some Billy Wilder quote about how in romantic comedies you don't need to establish reasons why the central couple should be together but instead establish reasons they can't be together. That's the whole movie, all those obstacles, and I think Notting Hill does just … Continue reading Notting Hill (1999)
Black Mass (2015)
Directed by Scott Cooper Black Mass is another Boston-set mob movie, this time about Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger (Johnny Depp), a mob boss who cut a deal with the FBI that helped him and the Winter Hill Gang flourish for years. It follows in the footsteps of Goodfellas and, perhaps even more so, in the shadow of The … Continue reading Black Mass (2015)
St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)
Directed by Joel Schumacher St. Elmo's Fire is a strange 80s classic about a group of recent Georgetown graduates trying their best to figure life out. Armed with a certain amount of wealth and opportunity, a film like this focuses on how they get in their own way. They are concerned about harbored crushes, cushy … Continue reading St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer Zombieland: Double Tap runs back the original with the same types of jokes, themes of family and all around optimism that might initially feel unwelcome in a world overrun by the apocalypse and the living dead. It feels rough in the sense that it never feels like a movie, instead just … Continue reading Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
The Front Runner (2018)
Directed by Jason Reitman The Front Runner is a sprawling ensemble of a movie about the first modern political sex scandal, that of 1988 Presidential candidate Gary Hart. The movie takes a look at an issue that in recent times has become rather black and white. When Hart was known to be sleeping around, with … Continue reading The Front Runner (2018)
Long Shot (2019)
Directed by Jonathan Levine Long Shot is a pretty wholesome modern, political rom com. It’s the love story between the Secretary of State (Charlize Theron) and an idealistic, over-enthusiastic out of work journalist (Seth Rogen). They meet by happenstance, as people do in rom coms, and because she once babysat him when they were teenagers … Continue reading Long Shot (2019)
The Laundromat (2019)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh I don't know, I liked The Laundromat. It's hard to know what the overall consensus is on a movie, but from what I've been hearing people are quite disappointed with this movie. Maybe it's because it does feel stylistically like a copy of The Big Short or Vice or simply that this being a … Continue reading The Laundromat (2019)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Directed by Robert Eggers In The Lighthouse two men are trapped on a desolate, stormy island for much longer than they signed up for. They are so isolated, in fact, that the film quickly leaps beyond any suggestion of realism and describes instead some version of hell or purgatory. The lighthouse keeper is Tom (Willem Dafoe), … Continue reading The Lighthouse (2019)
Parasite (2019)
Directed by Bong Joon-ho Parasite is wild. It’s just about everything a movie can be, it’s hilarious, tense, dramatic, unsettling, satirical and even a bit moving. That a movie should be all those things seems improbable, but combining two things like farce and pathos into a single story is nothing new to the works of … Continue reading Parasite (2019)
