Review – High Flying Bird

This is a perfect example of how Netflix is actually helping the film industry. Not that Soderbergh needs help producing and distributing movies. And I have other misgivings about Netflix and streaming in general. But a movie like High Flying Bird doesn’t get made and released in 2019 without a company like Netflix. It’s not the type of movie I see doing well in a theater....
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Review – Blindspotting

It’s rare for a movie to be both hilarious and also deeply, emotionally affecting. But Blindspotting hits those marks with equal measure. Actor/writer Daveed Diggs has written a script that crackles with wit and humor, and director Carlos Lopez Estrada moves us through this story, and through the city of Oakland, with blazing ferocity and ambition. It’s a joy to watch, rea...
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Review – A Star is Born

If you’ve seen his performance on Jimmy Fallon, you know that Bradley Cooper is an absolutely prodigious air guitarist. So it makes sense that he makes for a great rock star. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really WANT to like this movie. I am not a huge Gaga fan. Mind you, I don’t have anything against her. But I wasn’t really interested in her cross-over to acting. But damn it ...
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Review – Burning

The whole time I was watching this movie, I kept saying to myself, “this feels like Murakami.” It had the mystic conversations in a low-lit diner, and the presence of mysterious cats, and the quiet male protagonist captivated by a free spirited yet complicated girl - all staples of Haruki Murakami’s fiction. It had that feeling of this supernatural world hiding beneath the...
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Micro Review – Tag

This is a bad movie. It's got absolutely ridiculous antics (all the Jeremy Renner stuff is just so over the top). The female characters are some of the most shallow and underdeveloped I've seen in a long time (they're completely reliant on the male characters), and a half-assed attempt at "gender equality" at the end is shameful at best. This is a movie that is unabashedly...
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Review – If Beale Street Could Talk

This film has lingered on the periphery of my day today, trailing behind me like a shadow. I'll turn around and abruptly notice it there, indistinct but indisputable. This is just such a beautiful piece of filmmaking, based on a great novel by an iconic author, James Baldwin. For director Barry Jenkins, this is a perfect followup to Moonlight. It has this mix of biting ...
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Micro Review – Wildlife

Carey Mulligan turns in one of the best performances of the year in this quiet but affecting family drama that takes place in 1960's Montana. This is Paul Dano's directorial debut, and it fits in perfectly with his sensibilities. The performances are great across the board, from Gyllenhaal to Ed Oxenbould (who is so convincing as shy but curious son Joe). And we get a nice...
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Review – Glass

I’m just so surprised with how bad this was. Like, he made two good movies in this trilogy. And he managed to just royally screw this whole thing up. This movie is so awful, that it almost brings down Unbreakable and Split too, just by association. I was ready to be done watching it half way through. So maybe part of my disgust, and dissatisfaction with the twists and t...
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