Well, you all know what this post is about. A brief intro: Most years, I agonize over my top ten list to the bitter end, and then for a while after, too. This largely has to do with volume. I don’t tend to see all of the movies that I want or need to in a … Continue reading
I like seeing directors take pains not to pigeonhole themselves. Take André Øvredal, the Swedish filmmaker who shot Trollhunter back in 2010. You’d half expect him to make another movie in that vein, blackly funny and tons of fun. (You’d also hope he would make that movie, or any movie, sooner than six years after Trollhunter became a … Continue reading
Nobody ever gets sick of list-writing exercises or year-end reminiscences, so here’s a double dose from Movie Mezzanine, where I wrote about the 2016 film that’s most likely to inspire future filmmakers (Moonlight), and my favorite older discovery made during the year, The Executioner.
I can’t stop writing about year-end stuff! And there’s more year-end stuff to come! Unsatisfied with writing about the performances I wrote about for that other “best performances” feature, I decided to write about five more performances for Paste Magazine’s own “best performances” feature. I I think I totally crushed it. You tell me.
…hey, how about that, another year end list, whaddya know. 2016 is a big documentary year, as in “there are a lot of great documentaries that came out this year.” I wrote about Ava DuVernay’s 13th, and Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson, two fundamentally unalike films that remain among the year’s best documentary offerings, for The Playlist.
I ranked Silence in the #4 position on my BOFCA ballot this year, so naturally my review of the film has pretty high praise for it. You’ll hear a lot about the film in the coming weeks, much of which will, I’m certain, be bent around matters of representation; the questions raised in those conversations are … Continue reading
If I had to count down the best films in a specific genre, that genre might as well be horror, so that’s what I did: I, in tandem with a handful of my esteemed colleagues as Paste Magazine, put together a list of the fifteen horror movies in 2016 that most deserve your time and … Continue reading
The year end train continues! Over at The Playlist, I wrote a few capsules about a few of the best performances of 2016, notably the dueling works of Isabelle Huppert, who appears in both Elle and Things to Come, two very different movies where she plays very similar roles. You should maybe take a looksie, eh? … Continue reading
And again with the Brooklyn Nine-Nine reviewing, over at Paste Magazine as always, in which Charles Boyle taps into his inner mommy strength and goes sickhouse on a gang of gunrunners, all in pursuit of giving young Nikolaj the perfect (first) Christmas. (Content warning: Joe Lo Truglio’s chest hair.) A good way to break for a … Continue reading
When did Pablo Larraín become one of cinema’s hardest working people? The guy has two movies in theaters right now, and they’re just the second and third movies of his that have graced screens in 2016. The Club is probably the best of the bunch, but I liked his latest, Neruda, a sort-of biopic about Pablo … Continue reading
As though you need to be reminded that it’s that time of year, I have, in addition to my BOFCA voting, been contributing to year-end lists, the first of which is The Playlist’s 25 Best Films Of 2016 list. I didn’t say much, just around 200 words or so about Anna Rose Holmer’s excellent fiction … Continue reading
Is there that much difference between a play and a movie that it’s worth talking about? Yes, of course, but also no; it depends greatly on the movie in question, and that movie happens to be Fences, a film that’s based on a play and shot like a play and which ultimately feels like a play, but … Continue reading
You’re aware, I imagine, that I am a member of BOFCA, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and if you are aware of that, then you are also likely aware that every year, we vote, as critics groups do, to determine with authority which movies of the last 365 days were, in a word, “best.” … Continue reading
All We Had encompasses a very, very particular storytelling aesthetic that I find absolutely loathsome, in which the director, Katie Holmes (also its star), decides it’d be fun to soft-shoe life lived hand to mouth on the open road. It’s basically dress-up, except she’s dressing up like a really poor person. I’d rather not say … Continue reading
Don’t let the score on this review fool you: “The Overmining” is likely going to end up being one of the funniest episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s fourth season. Take that to the hilarity bank. But it does come up short as far as making a cohesive narrative, and that really frosted my cake, so I was … Continue reading
It’s year-end time, folks, and Paste Magazine’s TV section has already kicked off the season by naming its picks for the best shows of the year, plus its picks for the best new shows of the year, which I contributed two write-ups for. (Guess which ones!) I don’t mind saying aloud and right off the bat that … Continue reading
I liked Sophia Takal’s sophomore film so much that I wrote about it twice: Once for Independent Film Festival Boston, once at the beginning of this here December month. (Both times for Paste Magazine, because surprise.) If you’ve already seen the film, well, no harm in reading my thoughts. If you haven’t, see it, then think … Continue reading
I watch a lot of movies, and I don’t write about all of them. This is especially true of the annual year-end rush to cram in as much movie watching goodness as possible before voting deadlines for the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA) and the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). Consider these capsules my … Continue reading
In this edition of Paste Magazine’s Criterion haul: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, that bizarre Marlon Brando Western One-Eyed Jacks, and the Lone Wolf and Cub chanbara series, which is just awesome. (Fun aside: Watch Moana and see if you can spot the way that Lone Wolf and Cub influences its story!).
I found the experience of Lion frustrating, but it took me time to understand the depths of my frustration. The film works for about an hour, its first hour, where young Saroo Brierly winds up lost in Calcutta, a place where he knows neither a soul nor a word of the language spoken; the terror he … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 