“It’s almost as if there are two movies going on here at the same time: a sparse, surrealist spatter film with our silent star fighting mechanical monsters, and a nigh-unwatchable horror comedy in which half a dozen or so obnoxious teens show up to interrupt him, dispensing bad banter and laborious backstory while we wait impatiently for them to die.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2021
BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR
“Inventing its own comedic ecosystem as it goes along, Wiig and Mumolo’s bonkers follow-up to Bridesmaids proceeds as a cockamamie collection of non sequiturs including an orchestra of mice playing the movie’s musical score, a lounge pianist who sings only about ‘boobies’ and sage words of advice from a talking crab voiced by Morgan Freeman.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2021
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
“Director Shaka King has fashioned this harrowing history lesson into a passionate, pulpy crime drama in the mold of The Departed and earlier Warner Bros. gangster pictures, but with a pointed political agenda. Though set in 1969, the film feels like very much a product of our recent, culture-wide reckoning with America’s racist power structures.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/11/2021
PVT CHAT
“Fox has an almost comically carnal screen presence that feels like a wonderful affront to a contemporary American cinema more sexless than the days of the Hays Code. You feel like you’re doing something dirty just by looking at her, and the first half of the film works best because she’s allowed to be an obscene abstraction.” – North Shore Movies, 02/08/2021
TWO OF US
“Meneghetti’s camerawork is as furtive as their affair, spying on the characters through peepholes and around corners. It’s a visceral film, fervent and sensual, flooded with unruly emotions. You feel the ardor of the lovers in their impossible circumstances, and swoon at the flickers of recognition that cross Chevalier’s otherwise immobile face.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/05/2021
SUPERNOVA
“A nice movie about nice people. These are gifted under-actors, with Firth doing that thing where he conveys enormous amounts of emotion without moving any of the muscles in his face. What’s missing from the film, I’m afraid, is the terror. All the postcard cinematography and pleasant parties paper over what’s ugliest about this damnable disease.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/05/2021
SUNDANCE 2021 PART FIVE: WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR, THE DOG WHO WOULDN’T BE QUIET, MASS, THE WORLD TO COME
My fifth and final dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Jane Schoenbrun‘s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, Ana Katz’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Fran Kranz’s Mass and Mona Fastvold’s The World To Come.
Continue readingSUNDANCE 2021 PART FOUR: EL PLANETA, LAND, MA BELLE MY BEAUTY, PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND
My fourth dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta, Robin Wright’s Land, Marion Hill’s Ma Belle, My Beauty and Sion Sono’s Prisoners Of The Ghostland.
Continue readingSUNDANCE 2021 PART THREE: STREET GANG, CRYPTOZOO, ON THE COUNT OF THREE, PASSING
My third dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Marilyn Agrelo’s Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo, Jerrod Carmichael’s On The Count Of Three and Rebecca Hall’s Passing.
Continue readingSUNDANCE 2021 PART TWO: THE PINK CLOUD, SABAYA, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD, STRAWBERRY MANSION
My second dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud, Hogir Hirori‘s Sabaya, Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s The Most Beautiful Boy In The World and Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s Strawberry Mansion.
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