Native Son (Chenal, 1951)
Is it possible for a film to be simultaneously mediocre (bordering on bad) and essential? Native Son has a lot of stuff wrong with it as a film. Wright was… Continue reading "Native Son (Chenal, 1951)"
Category: Reviews
-
-
A Call to Spy (Pilcher, 2019)
My go-to television contrarian take for the last decade or so has been an insistence that Stana Katic more or less kept a mediocre show called Castle afloat while her… Continue reading "A Call to Spy (Pilcher, 2019)"
-
Summer Streaming — 2020
Summerland Made In Italy Tesla Measure for Measure Creating a Character: The Moni Yakim Legacy
-
Boys State (Moss, 2020)
“And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me / He’d grown up just like me / My boy was just like me.” — “Cats in the Cradle,”… Continue reading "Boys State (Moss, 2020)"
-
Nakom (Norris & Pittman, 2016)
Nakom doesn’t pander to Western viewers. We are introduced to Iddrisu Awinzor (Jacob Ayanaba) while he is at medical school and follow him in his return to the village of… Continue reading "Nakom (Norris & Pittman, 2016)"
-
Flannery (Bosco & Coffman, 2020)
When I was an undergraduate in the mid 1980s, The Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed ninety-nine literature professors, asking which works written since the end of World War II would… Continue reading "Flannery (Bosco & Coffman, 2020)"
-
Greyhound (Schneider, 2020)
Tom Hanks is the selling point for Greyhound. In it, the actor — and now writer — has found a vehicle that is completely on brand. The film. like the… Continue reading "Greyhound (Schneider, 2020)"
-
Corpus Christi (Komasa, 2019)
Corpus Christi was Poland’s entry for Best International Film at the 2020 Academy Awards. It is a strong film that may well have taken home a prize most years, but… Continue reading "Corpus Christi (Komasa, 2019)"
-
The King of Staten Island (Apatow, 2020)
It is hard to know whether Judd Apatow grew up or I did. Once upon a time — 2007 to be precise — I found his portraits of aged but… Continue reading "The King of Staten Island (Apatow, 2020)"
-
How to Build a Girl (Giedroyc, 2019)
How to Build a Girl is the sort of film that allows you to write 90% of your review of it simply by making positive or negative comparisons to other… Continue reading "How to Build a Girl (Giedroyc, 2019)"