REVIEW: The Neon Demon [2016]

“Are you food or are you sex” Fame: all that’s glittered and gold, the intrinsic “it” quality we’d kill for but never do. That aura with an expiration date; beauty, confidence, radiance, and whatever other label outsiders use to transform you into a commodity to be bought, sold, and exploited within the tiny window before someone younger takes your place. This is Nicolas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon, an unexplainable concept jumping person to person without definition or discernment. It consumes the souls of unwitting vessels, makes them and breaks…

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REVIEW: Buddymoon [2016]

“It will make sense in just some seconds” When Flula Borg showed up in the Pitch Perfect 2 trailer I found myself smiling at his success. It was a cameo keen to capitalize on his YouTube DJ fame and unabashedly broken English Chatty Cathy vibe, but it was studio film exposure nonetheless. This cemented the fact that I had become a fan of this crazy German and as such jumped at the chance to see how he’d do as co-lead and co-writer of his own vehicle. Just as the prospect…

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REVIEW: The Purge: Election Year [2016]

“Is murder our new religion?” The escalation of terror has dialed up a few more notches as writer/director James DeMonaco takes us further down the hole of first world genocide in The Purge: Election Year. What began behind fortified walls and a false sense of modest superiority to show how no one was safe when bloodlust, greed, and jealousy ruled mankind soon entered the outdoors to find the government blatantly enforcing its own thinly veiled mantra of “kill the poor” when the public stopped doing it for them. The only…

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REVIEW: The Legend of Tarzan [2016]

“Look at his hands” The film wasn’t even over before an older woman sitting a row away loudly exclaimed, “I’m exhausted.” I chuckled to myself at the exasperation shown for what wasn’t even a two-hour movie, but quickly realized she wasn’t wrong. I felt a bit drained myself trying to figure out what part of The Legend of Tarzan director David Yates wanted me to care about. Was it the relationship between Tarzan aka John Clayton III (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) and their bond’s strength when…

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REVIEW: The Shallows [2016]

“The island of the pregnant woman” Not all shark movies should be compared to Jaws—not even The Shallows. If you were to make any type of correlation cinema-wise it should be Cast Away meets Gravity or All Is Lost. The idea here is to put a character in isolation during a survival moment where hope can be lost in an instant. Will he/she prevail? Will he/she give him/herself the opportunity to live? Most of us would give up as soon as that shark’s vice-grip tightened around our thigh. Kicking and…

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REVIEW: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, Wrath of God] [1972]

“Meat is floating by” Talk about the heart of darkness. It’s completely unsurprising that Francis Ford Coppola would admit to using Werner Herzog‘s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, the Wrath of God] as inspiration for his Apocalypse Now because they epitomize the stark moral depravity of warped conquering “heroes”. The quiet rage underlying every action as greed overtakes loyalty and hubris replaces strategy are all too real against the serene jungle settings hiding hidden antagonistic forces to complement the ones waging war inside these soldiers’ minds. For Conquistador Don Lope…

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REVIEW: Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] [2012]

“Are you still serving coffee?” German Academy Award-sweeping Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] is a day in the life of a Berliner slacker named Niko Fischer (Tom Schilling). He’s a law school dropout that’s been living off the thousand-dollar-a-week allowance his father continuously supplies under the auspices that it’s being used for college. He ignores responsibility to the tune of losing his girlfriend, his license, and his drive to succeed as anything more than a thinker thinking for thinking’s sake because he has nothing better to do or the…

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REVIEW: Sleeping Giant [2016]

“That’s the point. Something’s got to change.” Winner of the Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF and Best Canadian Feature in Vancouver after bowing at Cannes last May, Andrew Cividino‘s feature-length debut Sleeping Giant has earned itself a pretty impeccable pedigree. An expansion of his 2013 short film of the same name, this coming-of-age drama on the summer shores of Thunder Bay, Ontario is a universal tale for viewers of all nationalities. With the time period left ambiguous—cell phones aren’t used and the one video camera seen in this cottage…

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REVIEW: Now You See Me 2 [2016]

“You may not be having fun, but I am” The problem with giving a film steeped in misdirection a sequel is that the mysteries have already been uncovered. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle to achieve the same success. Now You See Me had a great magic premise wherein the theatrical audience was as in the dark as the fictional audience attending The Four Horsemen’s performances. We knew something big was happening, but weren’t privy to the plan. We watched the intrigue, received truth from an illusion-debunker,…

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REVIEW: De Palma [2016]

“I’m driven by unrealistic ideas” I’ve seen twelve Brian De Palma films in my lifetime—a seemingly healthy number when you consider the industry. A guy like Terrence Malick began his career just five years after Brian and it’s only his seventh film that hit DVD this week. Unfortunately for me, twelve doesn’t come close to equaling half of De Palma’s filmography. It’s a problem I always say I’ll rectify considering I’ve missed biggies like Blow Out and Carlito’s Way, but not one that would prevent me from checking out Noah…

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