Flawless
Where’s the line between a messy movie and a movie that’s a mess? Joel Schumacher’s clearly-flawed Flawless oozes with subplots while it tries to fulfill the obligations of an “unexpected buddy” movie. Like the pre-gentrification East Village that it’s built around, characters and cultures clash to chaotic, uneven results. Continue Reading →
Pleasure
SimilarMy Life Without Me (2003),
Ninja Thyberg's tale of a woman's attempt to make it in the adult film industry is a feature debut that doesn't pull any punches.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
Fresh from Sweden, Jessica (Sofia Kappel) has just landed in Los Angeles. The customs agent asks her a few questions, and when he inquires whether she’s here for business or pleasure, she says—you know what she says. This is the only moment Ninja Thyberg’s debut feature winks at its audience. From here on out, there’s no sense of humor to be had. Sure, characters will make jokes with each other once in a blue moon, but this is far from a fun watch.
You see, Jessica is in L.A. to become an adult film star, going by Bella Cherry instead. It seems immediate that she’s on her first shoot. She meets Mike (Jason Toler), who soon becomes her agent, and lives with three other young women in the porn industry (Revika Anne Reustle, Kendra Spade, and Dana DeArmond). On paper, it’s a standard star-is-born tale. In some ways it is, but that isn’t the main approach. Pleasure, while incredibly difficult to watch, repackages that subgenre into a look at the cycle of abuse when having boundaries isn’t a commodity. Continue Reading →
The Good Lord Bird
NetworkShowtime,
SimilarSám vojak v poli,
Ethan Hawke often plays characters who internalize their passions, who tend to smolder and keep their feelings under tight restraint. Not so in The Good Lord Bird, where as star and co-creator Hawke gives the biggest, grandest performance of his career playing radical abolitionist and fighter Captain John Brown, circa 1857. His Brown is a delusional, violent prophet, flecks of spit fleeing from his mouth as he screams scripture during guerilla warfare and is sent into fits of rage by his fellow whites’ refusal to “free the Negro”. But in a country anchored by the selling and owning of human beings, where survival is often precarious at best, Brown sometimes appears to be the sanest white man of them all (sometimes). Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Discovery
SimilarALF, Battle of the Planets,
Ben 10 Farscape,
Roswell Stargate SG-1 The Journey of Allen Strange, The Transformers, Valvrave the Liberator,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
The debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie is played out. It’s time for a new pop-cultural dispute to take hold, namely whether an episode of Star Trek Discovery that pays serious homage to Die Hard is, by extension, also a Christmas movie, despite having no explicit ties to the holiday. Continue Reading →
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher's 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is both a quite good movie and a deeply frustrating one. At its best, it thrillingly delves into the art of investigation through the eyes of two well-crafted and well-performed protagonists. At its worst, it falls flat on its face and takes its sweet time to get up, dust itself off, and get back into a groove. Continue Reading →
The Godfather Part III
Directed byFrancis Ford Coppola,
Although it’s since been cemented as a derided flop upon its release 30 years ago this month, The Godfather: Part III (1990) was neither the critical nor critical disaster people remember it to be. It was a decent financial success and would go on to be nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. However, a number of factors cropped up to help trash its reputation. It had a chaotic production that reached its apex when red-hot star Winona Ryder, cast as Mary Corleone, left the production just before her scenes were to be shot. Francis Ford Coppola replaced her with his non-actress daughter Sofia. Continue Reading →