REVIEW: Murder on the Orient Express [1974]

With the help of a hat box. If the way in which Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) manipulates his suspects into perfectly incriminating themselves upon inquisition—often unbeknownst to us until the final reveal—infers that he has a photographic memory, we the audience need a bit more exposition as it concerns yet unseen connections than perhaps the film would like to share. This is why director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paul Dehn provide an opening montage of newspaper clippings and shadowy reenactments of young Daisy Armstrong’s kidnapping and subsequent murder. Because it…

Read More

REVIEW: Thor: Ragnarok [2017]

Good luck with that, new Doug! Marvel fatigue has officially hit me, but not like a ton of bricks as much as a nagging sense that the studio is merely going through the motions. Unfortunately this slow unraveling is worse than a huge misstep because it means that a shift back onto the rails is less likely, especially with everyone hailing Thor: Ragnarok as a franchise entry that “breaks the rules.” If that means “push plot to the background for bloated excess dragging pacing out to the point of realizing…

Read More

REVIEW: Das merkwürdige Kätzchen [The Strange Little Cat] [2014]

And onions are my cats. We’ve all felt paralyzed at one time or another, fearing existence and responsibility as opposed to external forces and death. Life becomes our burden, the rote machinations to remain an upstanding member of society and the myriad social imperatives endured to be seen as a person worth ignoring—someone who neither demands attention from being abnormal or overly exceptional. To simply be can prove exhausting because the act of stasis comes with more minutiae than you may think is necessary. Our minds race to decide whether…

Read More

REVIEW: Mayhem [2017]

I just wanted the corner office. If you’ve ever worked an office job wherein every single one of your bosses has been promoted above his/her aptitude, you know what futility feels like. You slave away at your cubicle to reach beyond your pay grade only to have someone that knows nothing about what you do—or worse, throws you under the bus for something you’ve never even heard about—derail everything with the stroke of a pen or click of a button. What’s your recourse? Unless they stupidly cc’d you on the…

Read More

REVIEW: My Friend Dahmer [2017]

Smiles up. When someone kills seventeen people over a thirteen-year span with words like necrophilia and cannibalism circling each murder, sympathy for the predator—not his prey—is neither the first nor hundred and first emotion that should come to anyone’s mind. I’m not certain there could be room for anything but disgust whether you’re a stranger, a family member, or an old friend reading the news. And yet we try to find motivation nonetheless. We wonder about how someone could become such a monster right under our nose without ever suspecting…

Read More

REVIEW: Long Time Running [2017]

You don’t tell Gord he can’t do something. I’m not sure who it was that said it, but someone put into context what Gord Downie‘s terminal cancer diagnosis meant to Canada shortly after it was announced. Beyond this tragedy on a personal level for his friends, family, and The Tragically Hip bandmates, the idea that we would never again hear his voice sing “Bobcaygeon” or “Courage” live meant his nation was losing its first legend of rock and roll. As an American I had to read the statement again because…

Read More

REVIEW: Suck It Up [2017]

… And she fell down. Grief is a strange, personal, and often entirely unexpected response to tragedy. It will differ depending on who you are, the point in life you’re at, the cause, and myriad details spanning scenario, age, love, hate, or surprise. To cope with a grandparent’s death for example is something we all know is coming. We prepare ourselves for the inevitability and therefore find ourselves able to push through the pain with little to no trouble—depending on your relationship, of course. Conversely, the passing of someone still…

Read More

REVIEW: The Killing of a Sacred Deer [2017]

You’re too young to worry. Writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos is an artist who deals with consequences through elaborately skewed and often-uncomfortable scenarios just left of the off-putting spot that’s just left of center. He uses absurdity and humor to provoke us in order for his complex existential and social messages to hit home in a way strict realism never could. His films are thus morality plays of sorts pitting characters against one another in a puzzle that may or may not be of their own choosing. They are presented with a…

Read More

REVIEW: Visages, villages [Faces Places] [2017]

To meet new faces and photograph them so they don’t fall down the holes in my memory. To look at some of the work of “unidentified” artist JR—giant black and white images pasted onto surfaces with a literal or figurative contextual relationship—is to see the type of community-based, socially conscious messaging Agnès Varda built a career documenting. It’s no surprise to therefore hear JR explain how meaningful Varda’s Mur murs was to him as a budding artist searching for his unique voice and style. I can think of no two…

Read More

REVIEW: Beloved [1998]

Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all. Love creates and destroys. Mix in post-traumatic stress disorder and you’ll never know which until it’s too late. Evil can permeate your soul and color your psychology in ways that merge right and wrong into a singular goal seeking survival. To endure horror is to alter everything you were, your innocence lost no matter how hard you try to reclaim it. The thought of experiencing the nightmare again—or having it find you within a place you believed safe—is enough…

Read More

REVIEW: Blade Runner 2049 [2017]

Because you’ve never seen a miracle. Survival is a selfish endeavor, but not necessarily one driven by ego. On the contrary, survival is often a selfless means to place community ahead of the individual. Look at our country’s current, abhorrent divisions along lines we should have erased decades ago or never created in the first place. As long as privilege exists and one race, gender, religion, et al holds power and sway above the rest simply because it fears relinquishing its place atop the “status quo,” rebellion is only a…

Read More