I stopped watching trailers years ago (even in theaters: phone's out, earbuds in) and it's one of the best choices I've made, because I can walk into a movie like this with zero expectations, as if I were in its festival premiere. I can't say if knowing the outline of the plot (which is pretty clearly laid out in the marketing) would have diminished my experience, but I doubt I'd have had a beaming smile plastered on my face as…
Kinda incredible this works as well as it does. The madcap energy alone would have kept me on board for the 3+ hour runtime, but underneath the zaniness, there's a genuine sincerity that the film earns through its vibrant characters and their interconnected stories. Chazelle is in a completely different mode here—loose and manic—and though I think it's being oversold as vulgar or provocative, its ambition is undeniable. Might have outright loved this if the finale worked for me; it's…
McDonagh reunites the leads from In Bruges for his best film yet. The writing in this is just incredible—it's thematically rich, emotionally potent, and frequently hilarious but never at the expense of the dramatic weight at its center. I expected this to be a two-hander, but it's much more of an ensemble piece. Gleeson and Farrell are excellent, of course, but Condon and Keoghan also give strong performances as well. The setting and characters feel lived-in and organic. As a Three Billboards hater, I'm delighted to have really enjoyed McDonagh's follow up.
Synecdoche, New York by way of Jackass and Tim & Eric, the year's most theoretically audacious film is actually just an overblown spectacle of gleeful stupidity. It's a monotonous riff on a single thematic idea, which is disappointing considering Aster’s track record of mining weighty thematic ideas for horror and comedy alike. All that said, it’s consistently entertaining, and occasionally hilarious, for its three-hour runtime, and I got enough out of it on a surface level that the lack of substance didn’t bother me much.
Seeing Borat opening night in a sold out theater was a singular experience—hardest I've ever laughed in a theater (topped only by the trailer for Breakthrough)—and maybe I should have left it at that, instead of revisiting it at home years later, when, to no one's surprise, it doesn't have a shred of the same impact. I couldn't get enough of Da Ali G Show when I was younger, but I figured, after Bruno, it was only fitting that he'd…
Corbet's follow up to Vox Lux, one of the most polarizing (and best, imo) films of the past decade, is a rebuke of the American Dream (as one can immediately gather from the poster image), an epic which spans decades in its 3+ hour runtime. It's perfectly paced—to my mind, at least; I overheard a few people describe it as "tedious" during the intermission, but I was shocked when both halves ended far sooner than I expected—features some of the…
Quite excellent until its final act. The cinematography, score, editing choices, and, most of all, the performances are firing on all cylinders. Guadagnino's electrifying filmmaking makes the shifting character dynamics as edge-of-your-seat thrilling as any of the tennis match showdowns. But in the end it sacrifices, and in some ways betrays, the character motivations it took nearly 2 hours to establish in detail, rushing through contrived plot developments in order to land on a final note that would be sensational…
Donald Ray Pollock's extraordinary novel is a difficult one to adapt. First of all, the grizzly content—unless dampened—would necessitate an NC-17 rating and alienate most audiences, even those with a predilection for bleak and violent films. But also, the unconventional vignette-y approach Pollock utilizes in exploring the horrifying world he creates doesn't lend itself to the typical three-act structure we've grown accustomed to. Considering those major challenges, Campos does a fantastic job, altering very little of the story itself and…
I intentionally avoided rewatching the first part, especially at home, because I feared the "astonishing sense of grandeur," as I called it, would be dulled on a second viewing. Maybe my tepid reaction to this second part is confirmation of that. I found myself losing interest as it went along, neither awed by the spectacle nor intrigued by the story. Villeneuve does an admirable job adapting the book's much more challenging second half, but there's no avoiding the inherent goofiness…
Larraín undoubtedly excels in montage. There are some sublime sequences here where the formalism coalesces perfectly; the slow gliding camerawork, beautiful compositions, sharp editing, and commanding score from Nicolas Jaar are all excellent, especially in conjunction, but the filmmaking is particularly ill-suited to the content, and the film lacks narrative and thematic coherence. The first half has its moments, especially when it comes to the vibrant visuals, but it's like watching Nicolas Winding Refn (who has made worse, but never…
Still slightly prefer the remake, where the intruders are portrayed in a more overtly gleeful manner, making them even more sinister than here where they're stripped almost entirely of personality. Some of Haneke's point is lost by removing their blank slate/lifeless characterization, but I think there's plenty in the writing that compensates for it (various nicknames, life stories, their interchangeability, etc.). No need to delve into a thorough analysis of the two versions, or the significance of the violence being…
I love the formalism: gorgeous cinematography and art direction which makes it the first film I've seen in a couple years which I genuinely think exponentially benefits from being seen on a big screen; incredible score which amplifies the film's already prominent atmosphere; deliberate pacing which demands a lot of patience from the viewer, but is rhythmic and hypnotic in a way that took me by surprise. Where the film sadly falls short for me is the content. The lengthy…