It is never a bad time to remind thoughtful viewers that pressures on young people to thrive academically are as high and as potentially traumatizing as pressures to succeed artistically… Continue reading "Accepted (Chen, 2021)"
I paused Mama Bears in the first hour and wrote in my notes: “It sometimes feels not enough for me that the mamma bears have reformed once their own children… Continue reading "Mama Bears (Kyi, 2022)"
Ambulance is an amoral film about amoral people that made me angry. That doesn’t mean you won’t like it, and if you don’t it may be for very different reasons.… Continue reading "Ambulance (Bay, 2022)"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is so ubiquitous in the American classroom that it is a bit surprising that there is not yet a definitive film adaptation. Not that… Continue reading "The Yellow Wallpaper (Pontuti, 2020)"
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am a documentary fan. Two of my absolute favorites in the genre (Shut Up and Sing!; The Queen of Versailles) are ones… Continue reading "Belle Vie (Mizelle, 2022)"
“Where do you want to go?” is the last line of Zero Dark Thirty. It is spoken by a pilot tasked with chartering Maya (Jessica Chastain) to the first destination… Continue reading "Zero Dark Thirty — 10 Years Later (Bigelow, 2012)"
I suspect that viewers will enjoy or esteem The Unmaking of a College to the extent their politics and ideology are compatible with those of the students who organized “the… Continue reading "The Unmaking of a College (Goldstein, 2022)"
I’ve been a Koreeda fan ever since I picked up a VHS tape of Maborosi (1995) from the sale bin of a video outlet. When I started attending the Toronto… Continue reading "Air Doll (Koreeda, 2009)"
I won’t speculate about how Amazon Studios’s Reacher will play for those unfamiliar with Lee Child’s books or fans of the Tom Cruise films based on the same character. I… Continue reading "Reacher"
Can a film be simultaneously essential and disappointing? I ask because I feel like we do need to talk about Cosby — or at least I do. But while the… Continue reading "We Need to Talk About Cosby (Bell, 2022)"
