Flavors of Youth points out how memory is essential to all identity. How it is the source of all art and creativity.
Tag: drama
“Zama”: A Long Hard Slough About Colonial Waiting
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 …
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“Summer 1993”: An Authentic Sketchbook of Childhood Grief
Summer 1993 feels lived in, breathed, authentic but never nostalgic. There is not a lot of drama but plenty of life on display.
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“Madeline’s Madeline” Isn’t Quite WTF Enough
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 Pure Testosterone and Rage
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”: The First Great Western of Our Time
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.
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“Brij Mohan Amar Rahe” Is Too Squalid for Bollywood
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.
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“Blindspotting” Is There There
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.
“Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” Doesn’t Go Far Enough
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.
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“The Warning” Is a Memento of a Beautiful Mind
It’s a Memento meets A Beautiful Mind thriller about a Basque man who discovers that there is a mathematical correlation between a convenience store shooting tragedy and the same spot’s past, present and future.
“You Were Never Really Here” Is One of the Best
Lynne Ramsey who made the hallucinogenic school violence themed fantasmagoria We Need to Talk About Kevin returns to direct after a five year hiatus. Like Kevin, Here is an impressionistic tonal assault of over saturated images, amped up acoustic exaggeration …
“Father of the Year” Is a Bad Dad Every Other Time
Adam Sandler produced Netflix movies aren’t about the quality. They are about how much stuff they can get away with, the more sexual the better. The plots are just setups for the gags. Father of the Year excuse is about …
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“Damsel” Isn’t in Distress
Damsel is probably the best of a trio of feminist Westerns to grace the big and and small screen this year.
“Isle of Dogs”: Wes Anderson’s Unbearable Lightness of Being an Abandoned Canine
The sorrowful wisdom brought by their abandonment can be heard in the dialogue (spoken in English by a talented American voice cast), a disaffected whine two hopes, a pat and a cheerful compliment removed from love.
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“The Skin of the Wolf” Is Beneath Just Barely a Man
There is no explanation, no backstory just observation enshrouded in mythic layers of beautiful cinematography. Everything is left to interpretation, which is both besides the point and probably is the point.
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“Boundaries” Knows Where Those Are
Boundaries implies it's a film with no boundaries or trying to find it boundaries.
“The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter”: A Different Kind of Deer Hunter
When the expected Deliverance moment comes it is both false and awkwardly right. They all get through the rapids not shattered, just a little bit better men, friends and maybe understanding and appreciative parent and child.
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“Lean on Pete” Races Out the Quarter Mile of Adolescent Dreams
Director Andrew Haigh doesn't elevate the story with sappy sentiments and phony triumphs. Instead he delivers an elegiac rendering of the death of childhood.
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“King of Peking”: Father and Son Create Their Buddy Film
King of Peking (streaming on Netflix) proves that the best buddy films are created by fathers and sons.
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“First Reformed”: An Anguished Meditation on a Corrupted World.
First Reformed is one of Schrader's finest films. It is his redemption, and a perfect fit for his transcendental style
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Sunday’s Illness: Healing a Broken Mother-Daughter Bond
It is all so emotionally and nakedly obvious. And that not only makes Sunday's Illness good but near great.
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“All I Want” Tries to Get Pass “The Big Chill”
All I Want, a smart little indie co-written by the actress Melissa Center and debut director West Liang, is the millennial attempt to beat The Big Chill.
“Hotel Artemis” tries to keep the cons conned
Foul mouth and over confident gangsters, international female assassins, domestic hit men with fuckup siblings, kingpins with hot triggered heirs that have daddy inferiority complexes, a city in riot mode, and Dave Bautista channeling Drax 2X, make for an over …
“Hereditary” Bringing Up the R Baby
Hereditary is a smart reminder that the horror movie hasn't entirely forgotten it's past.
Stepping “Outside In” to Free Themselves from Their Personal Prisons
Every director strives for honesty, but few achieve it so sincerely as Lynn Shelton does in Outside In.
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