Ten Sentence Movie Reviews and Other Mussings
Flavors of Youth points out how memory is essential to all identity. How it is the source of all art and creativity.
Read More "“Flavors of Youth” Explores the Essentials of Identity"
Zama is about waiting— not the Waiting for Godot or Guffman kind— but the Colonial kind, which is historical, eloquently long and wonderfully filmed, cryptically acted and so broadly elliptical that it could mean anything while seemingly meaning everything. The kind that is either literary fraud or masterwork.
Read More "“Zama”: A Long Hard Slough About Colonial Waiting"
Summer 1993 feels lived in, breathed, authentic but never nostalgic. There is not a lot of drama but plenty of life on display.
Read More "“Summer 1993”: An Authentic Sketchbook of Childhood Grief"
The titular heroine, who may or may not be going mad, is played by newcomer Helena Howard. Don’t take her disaffected scowl for serious acting. Three quarters of runway models can produce and sustain the same look.
A Prayer Before Dawn is a pure example of testosterone and rage filmmaking. It leaves you beaten down and shattered.
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The Rider is a heartbreaking portrayal of those who can and cannot give up, of those living broken lives with broken dreams and broken hopes.
Read More "“The Rider”: The First Great Western of Our Time"
Brij Mohan tries to give its audience something more substantial than the usual light Bollywood fare. It ends up to squalid for that audience to watch.
Read More "“Brij Mohan Amar Rahe” Is Too Squalid for Bollywood"
Blindspotting is pure Oakland, pure there there. It drills down into the city’s essence and finds not just a physical place but the perfect metaphor for a divided and disenchanted America struggling and resisting change.
Sadly, Callahan’s cartoons vividly animated and sketched are receded as the art becomes background to the Oedipal drama of a son successfully overcoming his abandonment issues and alcoholism.
Read More "“Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” Doesn’t Go Far Enough"
