REVIEW: Malignant [2021]

It’s time we cut out the cancer. I don’t know about you, but the prologue to James Wan‘s Malignant is so tonally over-the-top that I expected the title screen to fade away and reveal it was a soap opera on the television inside Madison Mitchell’s (Annabelle Wallis) home. Reality, however, provides something different: an earnest decision to stay true to that soapy filter of comically extreme emotions with blatantly obvious reveals punctuated by overwrought music cues. Give Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper credit for sticking to those guns because the…

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REVIEW: Toni Erdmann [2016]

“That was real fear” I wasn’t sure what to think upon realizing it was Maren Ade who directed Toni Erdmann, the wild comedy that took Cannes by storm. Her previous film Alle Anderen was very much a drama—a fantastic one at that—and this switch brought intrigue. Now that I’ve finally seen it, however, it’s easy to see the transition wasn’t a difficult one to pull off. This father/daughter tale may have a lot of comedy, but its heart is still steeped in the dramatics of struggling to make love work.…

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