My earliest encounter with political science was an elementary school riddle that asked, “What is the difference between a revolutionary war and a civil war?” The answer — “who wins”… Continue reading "Huda’s Salon (Abu-Assad, 2021)"
Normally when my critical opinion is an outlier, it is the case that I am defending or esteeming some more widely panned film, so I was surprised when I saw… Continue reading "King Richard (Green, 2021)"
At several moments during Regina King’s One Night in Miami, I found myself thinking the film was working better than I expected. I kept waiting for its rickety structure of… Continue reading "One Night in Miami (King, 2020)"
Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit has emerged from the fall festival circuit as the still-early-but-not-way-too-early leader in the clubhouse for awards season. It won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto (as… Continue reading "Jojo Rabbit and Huck Finn"
I spent just over half of Ford v Ferrari comparing the film to the inferior, cliché-ridden version of itself that I assumed going in that it would be. Eventually, I… Continue reading "Ford v Ferrari (Mangold, 2019)"
There is a painful laugh-out-loud moment near the end of The Report, Scott Z. Burns’s docudrama about the Senate Oversight Committee’s attempts to investigate the CIA’s use of torture in… Continue reading "The Report — Filmfest 919"
Nina (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) might be described as an angrier, more messed up version of Amy in Trainwreck. In the first few scenes of the movie, she comes off stage… Continue reading "All About Nina (Vives, 2018)"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the harrowing, autobiographically inspired story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression who is confined against her will and whose “treatment” drives her… Continue reading "Boy Erased (Edgerton, 2018)"
Movie lovers at Chapel Hill’s Filmfest 919 got an early look at Destroyer , a crime drama sure to generate awards buzz for the barely recognizable Nicole Kidman, who plays… Continue reading "Destroyer (Kusama, 2018)"
