“How Ocean’s 8 Succeeded Where Ghostbusters Went Wrong”

I’m surprised that this is a hot-ish take (which I guess makes it a lukewarm-ish take, right?), but: Ocean’s 8 is a superior gender-flipped reboot to most other gender-flipped reboots released to date, chief among them being Ghostbusters ’16, a movie I do not have a positive relationship with.  Look, the plain damn truth is that these … Continue reading →

“The Best Documentaries of 2018 (So Far)”

Oh, hey, shocker, I happily wrote capsule blurbs for Hale County This Morning, This Evening and Crime + Punishment for Paste Magazine‘s “best docs of ’18 to date” list, man, bet you’re all real fucking surprised about that.  I don’t know what else you want me to say. They’re great movies. Hale County This Morning, This Evening in particular … Continue reading →

Review: Hearts Beat Loud, 2018, dir. Brett Haley

For clarity’s sake, all of the things I say about Brett Haley in the intro to my review of his latest, Hearts Beat Loud, is absolutely true: I’ve never spoken to him one on one, but I have seen him speak, twice, two years in a row, at Independent Film Festival Boston, where in both appearances he … Continue reading →