Tag: 2021

Experience the incredible music of Summer of Soul

March 4, 2022

Summer of Soul is a love story to an event that defined the shared sense of passion, respect, and talent within the Black community of New York. The music is exceptionally good. The vibes of this crowd range from general enthusiasm to down right apoplectic with the type of icons and talent involved. It’s one of those docs that unearths a piece of essential history, and even if some of the filmmaking misses the mark in telling a full bodied story, the introduction to the history wins one over. … More Experience the incredible music of Summer of Soul

Hit the Road is a painfully intimate story that slowly unravels

March 3, 2022

HIt The Road. The title implies a journey with a beginning, but not necessarily an ending. Panah Panai’s journey without an ending embodies the title, and the emotion behind it. A script with a fascinating set of character archetypes and dynamics that all play out gradually, leading these actors to special moments. The slow revealing nature of the plot, while the characters are trapped in a laboriously long car ride through the Iranian desert, permits us to spend a deeply intimate period with a family. There is a destination to their journey, but it’s often lied about or hinted at but never stated explicitly. Even at the end of the film, it’s difficult to know the reason why this experience was necessary for this family’s survival. … More Hit the Road is a painfully intimate story that slowly unravels

Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop a nothing, repetitive teenage romance

March 3, 2022

Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is a film that definitely wasn’t made with a person like me in mind. It’s a film geared towards pre-teens with social anxiety and uses the overly generic trope of missed connection out of fear to keep one’s interest in this budding romance. … More Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop a nothing, repetitive teenage romance

Boiling Point is the one-shot done right

March 3, 2022

Done in one brilliantly crafted one-shot, the brisk flow of the pacing and camera movements made it feel natural as possible, as if one was a quiet observer watching a restaurant kitchen crumble. The pressure cooker atmosphere enhances the thematic relevance, and captures the true tension and anxiety of running a restaurant. Food people who … More Boiling Point is the one-shot done right

Limbo (2021) paints refugee status as a lonely place among ignorant people

March 2, 2022

Limbo is the cultural disconnect between a refugee and where he’s taking refuge, as these men are stuck in a seemingly endless purgatory on a small fictional Scottish island. It’s a film that so accurately depicts the sort of assumptions, racism, and utter nonsense these people face on a daily basis, showing the type of privileged stupidity that allows one but disallows the other. Seeing refugees treated as simpletons needing to be elevated to be a part of their “sophisticated” society that, in reality, is a bunch of meatheads with no common sense, shows the domineering attitudes as ignorant. … More Limbo (2021) paints refugee status as a lonely place among ignorant people

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn not as fun as title suggest

March 1, 2022

enuinely surprised how much I disliked a film titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn but here we are. The general idea and structure around COVID restrictions, cancel culture, and the hypocrisy around society’s chaste attitudes and pseudo-purity aren’t novel and underexplored here. … More Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn not as fun as title suggest

Caleb Landry Jones is hauntingly brilliant in Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram”

March 1, 2022

Nitram is devastatingly cruel in the exploration of Australia’s first mass shooter and refreshingly honest in the horrors of this character’s worldview. Caleb Landry Jones as the dejected, irrational, and completely broken soul is on full display and the depiction of this hateful figure where this type of violent outrage feels somehow inevitable, but the direction and the performances hide the sickly underbelly with shades of his humanity and how it gets stripped from him. … More Caleb Landry Jones is hauntingly brilliant in Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram”

The 2022 PGA Nominations rewarding extreme American blandness

February 1, 2022

merica (PGA) has become the end all be all of Oscar prognostication. The preferential ballot changed everything and PGA being the lone awards body operating under that system makes the winner here a valuable commodity to pundits. For reference, 20 of the 29 PGA Golden Laurel (or best picture) winners have gone on to win the Oscar. … More The 2022 PGA Nominations rewarding extreme American blandness

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy Hamaguchi’s Subversive Anthology Film

January 18, 2022

Ryusuke Hamaguchi stealth released two films in one year. His “other” film being the Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, a methodical exploration of character that’s so honest with itself, paced so deliberately to invoke connection and a sense of realism. The anthology structure lets Hamaguchi grapple heavily with the themes through a variety of situations … More Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy Hamaguchi’s Subversive Anthology Film

CERTIFIED WEIRD: Sean Baker’s Red Rocket a triumph of backwater Texas sleaziness

December 31, 2021

Sean Baker’s dedication to the lower socio-economic people of the South is what makes his films so unique. Red Rocket is the best of backwater Texas towns. The sleaziness is embedded on every line Simon Rex speaks and every action he takes. His magnetic performance as the suitcase pimp, still gleaming off his glory days in the adult film industry, is a real piece of work. Yet, he’s extraordinarily likeable for how much of a narcissistic piece of shit he really is. … More CERTIFIED WEIRD: Sean Baker’s Red Rocket a triumph of backwater Texas sleaziness