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Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)
Let the Right One In is a foreign, art-house, vampire film starring a bunch of weird-looking Swedish kids. But also it’s a haunting look at isolation, childhood trauma and intimacy somewhere in the hazy realm between friendship and first love. Stark and matter-of-fact about its subject matter (Swedish vampires), this minimalist film was good enough…
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A Dark Song
If occult magic had real power, what would it take to achieve it? If humanity could summon and control transcendent spirits, would the process be painless? Empowering? Academic? A Dark Song, an Irish independent film from first-time writer/director Liam Gavin, speculates quite the opposite. By turns intense, exhausting, brutal and horrifying, the filmic magic of…
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Booksmart
Booksmart has been on our radar since its release in May. With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, it’s one of the best-reviewed films of the year. But now, it’s our turn. Does the movie live up to the hype? Booksmart is the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde. Whatever faults Wilde brings to her first…
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The Last Black Man in San Francisco
At the end of the day, we’re all just looking for a place to call home. Movies have long wrestled with this sentiment and not just in a physical sense. Hitchcock’s characters don’t trust the people closest to them, and are often punished when they do. Kubrick finds humanity and depravity in the cosmos just…
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Once Upon a Time In Hollywood
The ninth film from Quentin Tarantino is now playing, and it’s filled to the brim with everything you love or hate about his movies. When Once Upon a Time In Hollywood was first announced, we admittedly feared the worst. A Tarantino film about the Manson murders? Gulp. But the end result is guaranteed to surprise…
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Midsommar
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A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich
Politicians, journalists and experts rarely agree, but they have all named the current opioid situation a plague. It’s an appropriate word, with historical and biblical connotations; in every generation, our country has been marred by the misapplication of drugs. Morphine after the Civil War, opium in the late 1800s, cocaine in the 1900s, amphetamines in…
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The Lion King
In Disney’s continuing attempt to remake their animated classics, they have brought us The Lion King. The story has never looked so real, even though it treads familiar territory. Similar Yet Different While watching this version of The Lion King, I tried hard not to compare it to the original from 1994. However, it was…
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Oldboy (2003)
The 2003 film Oldboy (Oldeuboi), a Korean production directed by Park Chan-wook, is one of those disturbing explorations of humanity that leaves you with something akin to a post-Lynchian (good Lynch) hangover that lingers for several months after viewing (for context I saw the movie in September of 2018 and I am still processing it).…
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Apollo 11
