REVIEW: Good Kill [2015]

“They don’t call it a hellfire for nothing” There are agenda movies that remain impartial to display a right and wrong interpretation of the ordeal on display through natural causes and there are those manipulated into force-feeding a single viewpoint upon the audience devoid of nuance. Andrew Niccol‘s Good Kill is the latter. The very few instances where he presents the alternative argument to his thesis—that drone strikes are a necessary evil with collateral damage proving the consequence of a “greater good” scenario—either arrive as though the character exclaiming it…

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REVIEW: Knight of Cups [2016]

“You’re still the love of my life. Should I tell you that?” The evolution of Terrence Malick is a fascinating one. From regular narrative structure to voiceover-driven epics to visual poems, his style has been stripped down to beautiful imagery and pithily obtuse dialogue sending us on journeys as much about ourselves as they are about the characters onscreen. Many believed his last film To the Wonder was a sign of decline—hours of improvised footage cobbled together during post-production into something wholly different than how it began—but I still held…

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REVIEW: Heir [2015]

“Ain’t nothing like the real thing” It’s not difficult to parse what’s happening after watching Gordon (Robert Nolan) chat online about his son with an as yet unnamed partner. The verbiage is simple and direct: “my son” with photo and a “play date??? :)” in reply. His anxiety and fear is palpable, but he doesn’t stop. He’s ready to take a leap that leaves no room for turning back and his transformation into the monster necessary to do so has begun to take shape with his flesh opening wide. Gordon…

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REVIEW: Dirty Books [2016]

“Jobs? You’re an after school club.” Print is dead and apparently this isn’t only true in the outside world where magazines and newspapers are shuttering and/or moving to a more robust online presence. Of course schools would find themselves facing the same problem. After all, it’s the latest generations’ penchant for using the internet as a source of daily headlines that has more or less catalyzed the transition. So when cost saving measures become number one on the to-do list of middle school principals the nation over, shuttering a paper…

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REVIEW: The Age of Adaline [2015]

“Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go” A high concept fantasy property such as The Age of Adaline could easily fall into trouble if it decided to put its focus on the mystery rather than the characters. J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz script deals with a woman who at twenty-nine was victim to an unexplained accident that left her unable to age. She wasn’t immortal or imperious to pain and injury; she simply would remain looking and being twenty-nine until something finally stopped her…

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REVIEW: Hello, My Name Is Doris [2016]

“I’m possible” Welcome to the world Doris Miller (Sally Field). It’s been too long—forty years to be exact—since you were free to roam unencumbered by self-imposed responsibilities and familial guilt no one was willing to spend the time to help alleviate. Yes, Doris has been fridged from social interaction for four decades as she quietly took the ferry from Staten Island each day to work at a company that gradually got younger and younger until she was past out-of-touch and just plain lost. She did this because she devoted her…

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REVIEW: El abrazo de la serpiente [Embrace of the Serpent] [2015]

“Knowledge belongs to all men” It’s 1909 and the colonists have arrived in Colombia searching for rubber. They kill, enslave, and rape the land of its resources, systematically destroying a way of life at the snap of their fingers to project their own culture, religion, and greed instead. One Amazonian shaman refuses to fall victim to the physical and spiritual slaughter. Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) chooses solitude to preserve all he knows in the midst of invasion. But what of the anaconda that fell from the Milky Way speaking to him…

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REVIEW: Of Mice and Men [1939]

“I ain’t gonna say a word” We’ve all read John Steinbeck‘s classic novella Of Mice and Men and I believe teenagers will continue doing so in Middle/High School for the foreseeable future. What may change—and if memory serves me correctly might have already changed upon my turn at flipping the pages—is which cinematic version teachers show afterwards. As we move further and further into the twenty-first century I can imagine the numbers of kids intrinsically bored by the sight of black and white growing exponentially with each tick of the…

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REVIEW: The Little Foxes [1941]

“That’s cynical. But cynicism is an unpleasant way of telling the truth.” The fact The Little Foxes didn’t win an Oscar wasn’t for a lack of trying as all nine of its nominations were well earned. An adaptation of Lillian Hellman‘s stage play from just two years prior directed by William Wyler, this tale of a ruthless trio of siblings hardly shy about admitting they “stole” their wealth through marriage is witty, biting, and authentic in its look at cheaters, victims, and those standing idly by. The early nineteenth century…

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REVIEW: The Crying Game [1992]

“He believes in the future” It’s amazing how different a film can feel when you put close to two decades behind your first viewing. When I watched Neil Jordan‘s The Crying Game as a teenager I did so to see what all the fuss was about. I already knew the “secret” and found it difficult to believe anyone couldn’t (in my defense, neither could Jaye Davidson‘s Dil inside the movie). But it was an intriguing tale just the same. The dynamic between captor (Stephen Rea‘s Fergus) and captive (Forest Whitaker‘s…

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REVIEW: 10 Cloverfield Lane [2016]

“You need to eat. You need to sleep. And you need to start showing a little appreciation.” Let’s address the elephant in the room first: 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a sequel to Cloverfield no matter what the title and media suggest. The filmmakers simply thought the script (developed by Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken; rewritten/polished by Damien Chazelle before embarking on Whiplash) felt a lot like Matt Reeves and Drew Goddard’s handheld alien invasion thriller. J.J. Abrams agreed, added a Slusho sign, recruited his “Alias” buddy Bradley Cooper for…

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