A Quiet Place Review: Horror Distilled

There is something particularly satisfying about a lean genre film that knows exactly what it wants to be, and nails that mission statement. Actor turned director John Krasinski's post-apocalyptic thriller A Quiet Place is storytelling distilled into pure tension. It wisely abides by Hitchcock’s old adage about the nature of cinematic suspense. Taking place in …

Ready Player One Review: Nerd References Galore

Ready Player One defied my expectations, but not entirely in a good way. I went in assuming that the self-indulgent reference-palooza would be tempered by Spielberg’s mastery of the popcorn flick. The man defined the modern blockbuster movie after all, and his prolific career has been marked by his consistent ability to bring drama and …

Isle of Dogs Review

Wes Anderson’s ostentatious style of direction can mostly come off in one of two ways. It can either imbue it’s worlds with a sense of quirk that mirrors the oddball charm of its characters, or it can feel like a lot of overwrought technique for its own sake. Luckily, with Isle of Dogs, the form …

Love, Simon Review

Bearing homage to the 90s teen comedies of John Hughes and his colleagues, Love Simon is a bubbly, hilarious, and genuine take on the coming of age genre. Although it’s firmly rooted in the language of dramedies set in this familiar turning point in young people’s lives, it’s the consistently sharp character writing and the …

I Kill Giants Review

Clearly bearing inspiration from Where the Wild Things Are and other fiction that stars kids using fantasy to escape their tragic reality, this comic book adaptation is able to conjure enough empathy for its protagonist to deliver it through some rocky pacing in the first half. I Kill Giants stars Madison Wolfe as Barbara, a …

The Death of Stalin Review

There’s an inherent absurdity to the brutality of the early Soviet Union, millions of citizens butchered due to a combination of paranoia and obsession with maintaining control through fear. Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, Veep) clearly has no quibbles dealing in such a dismal historical context, squeezing hilarity out of the insane extremes …

Suspiria Quick-Review

A transfixing technicolor marvel; harsh reds, blues, and greens painting a kaleidoscopic nightmare of paranoia. Suspiria is a horror flick that puts aethsethics above all else, telling its story more succinctly through the undulated terror in the eyes of its stalked victims, than through its somewhat stilted dubbed dialogue. The tension, which is stretched throughout …

Police Story Review

Holy crap. That’s about all I can muster in response to Police Story, my first full experience with a Jackie Chan directed movie. Chan’s athleticism combined with his eye for directing action compositions makes for some the of most outlandishly cool fight choreographies ever caught on celluloid. The fluidity of each blow and movement, the …

Annihilation Review

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead* I think it's fair to say that we are always searching for meaning. As a collective we yearn for answers, whether that is through religion, philosophy, science, film, simple conversation, or any other way in which we process our surroundings. Some of us contemplate the possibility of other forms of intelligent life …

Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Sword of Life and Death Review

*Spoilers ahead Oh Thunderbolt Fantasy, how I’ve missed your weird marriage of wuxia, Taiwanese puppet animation, and maximum ham-level anime flourishes. For the uninitiated, Thunderbolt Fantasy was a 12 episode TV series created and written by Gen Urobuchi, one of the premier auteurs in the world of anime. Urobuchi coordinated the collaboration between Nitroplus, Good …