Time melts away while watching Damien Chazelle’s latest, La La Land about the nature of being an artist, dating a fellow performer and how dreams and expectations are hard won and that perspective too is a difficultly earned gift in growing older. How…
Movie Review: SiREN
There are a surprising number of good ideas in Gregg Bishop’s SiREN, especially for a film that’s a feature-length adaptation of Amateur Night, one of the short segments from the infamous horror anthology V/H/S (2012). Abandoning the short film’s three-buddies-shoot-an-amateur-porno…
Movie Review: Run the Tide
Taylor Lautner is all grown up—at least he’s trying to be in Run the Tide. Lautner plays Rey, a young man who is a guardian to his little brother and sets out to the west coast to seek a better…
Movie Review: Bleed For This
As Rocky Balboa once said, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Boxer Vinny Pazienza certainly embodied that decree both inside and outside of the ring. Bleed For…
Movie Review: Always Shine
Sophia Takal has a direct vision and it’s one that initially put me off when I left the theater. In your face and vibrant with mean spirited characters, the film doesn’t offer much in the way of emotional connection or…
Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals
Nocturnal Animals opens with old, naked, obese women in sensual poses,testing the audience’s comfort not even two minutes into the film. Director Tom Ford seems to be critiquing both the contemporary art sensationalism and heteronormative conditioning. Would we be so…
Movie Review: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Ang Lee is something of a visual poet. A master of creating richly thematic stories around gorgeous locals, he’s sensitive, but unorthodox in his approach, often spotlighting demographics who otherwise go underrepresented on screen. Reminding ourselves of this is important…