8 Best Movies To Watch After Stick It (2006)
Priscilla
As daybreak bleeds from within the walls, Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) wakes up next to her husband, Elvis (Jacob Elordi). Her water’s broken and, as he calls for a car, she goes to the bathroom, where she applies the perfect fake eyelashes in silence. Continue Reading →
Blue Chips
While difficult, it is essential when reviewing a film to evaluate it within the context of the era. To choose a relatively inoffensive hypothetical, if a movie made before 1980 refers to bipolar disorder as “manic depression,” you shouldn’t ding it for the outdated terminology. After all, at that moment, that was the proper parlance. Still, it’s not easy, especially when our understanding of an issue has changed significantly in the years since. This reviewer, for instance, struggled mightily to judge William Friedkin’s 1994 directorial effort Blue Chips on its own era-specific merits. Continue Reading →
Barbie
The news that director Greta Gerwig’s follow-up project to her celebrated adaptation of Little Women would be a movie about Barbie dolls was met with skepticism and even disappointment when first announced in mid-2019. What did it mean for the future of one of Hollywood’s few high-profile female directors? Would she abandon her apparent passion for telling intimate stories about coming of age? Continue Reading →
Falcon Lake
In Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman, we see a young girl meet another in the woods. Soon we learn the latter girl happens to be a literal younger manifestation of the former’s mother. In Charlotte Le Bon’s debut film, Falcon Lake, a pre-pubescent boy falls in love for the first time with the daughter of a family friend in a campsite supposedly haunted by a ghost. Continue Reading →
National Champions
If you haven’t been keeping up with college sports lately, you might have missed some of the recent headlines about the fight for student-athletes to get paid. The argument boils down to this: what right do we have to insist college ball is for amateurs when it’s morphed into a multi-billion-dollar business? Is it fair to deny those actually doing the work a piece of the pie? National Champions doesn’t just aim to explore that question, it makes a firm case that players should unionize. As a primer on the issues, it’s excellent. As a movie, it fails. Continue Reading →
Bruised
The best sports movies uplift and invigorate. They often take their formulaic structures to greater heights than what seems achievable. They transcend the films that they’re modeled after, pushing forward different definitions of winners and losers. The classics, Rocky, Hoosiers, A League of Their Own, offer the catharsis that sports can bring; they unite an audience in rapturous applause, even if the underdog doesn’t win the title fight. Unfortunately, Halle Berry’s directorial debut, Bruised, neither elevates nor shifts this formula, resigned to a middling existence likely to get lost among the endless titles shuffling through Netflix. Continue Reading →
The Novice
Isabelle Furhman's relentless lead performance as an obsessive aspiring athlete propels the Tribeca rowing drama forward. “Rhythm is everything,” a crew coach tells Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) at one point during The Novice, which won awards for best U.S. narrative feature, actress, and cinematography at the Tribeca Festival this week. The coach could well be explaining how this movie, about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at varsity rowing, differentiates itself from Black Swan (the movie about a young woman with an obsessive drive to be the best at ballet) or Whiplash (the movie about a young man with an obsessive drive to be the best at jazz drumming) or The Social Network (the movie about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at something, even if it winds up destroying the world, in part because there’s no way that he can row crew)—all of which The Novice resembles in content, and sometimes form. Writer-director Lauren Hadaway’s rhythm is her own, distinct from Darren Aronofsky’s, David Fincher’s, and Damien Chazelle’s, the triumvirate of dude directors who made those previous, excellent studies in obsession. Perhaps informed by her own college rowing experience, Hadaway keys into a relentless push-pull, especially as Alex drives herself further, further, and further still before picking herself up off the floor. Continue Reading →
My New Gun
Before he passed away at the age of 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in 52 feature films. Starring roles, character pieces, chameleon work—he left a legacy nearly unmatched in both quality and quantity. Now, with P.S.H. I Love You, Jonah Koslofsky wafts through the cornucopia of the man’s offerings. Continue Reading →