Drama

Reviews

Defining Moments

Every so often, an overly confident filmmaker comes along to lighten the mood around taboos.  There was Josh Lawson’s comedic approach to bizarre sexual fetishes in The Little Death, then Dave Schultz’s tasteless handling of suicide and death in Considering Love & Other Magic, and now Stephen Wallis with Defining Moments, an exhausting flume of individual stories dealing with heavy subject matter (like mental health) and the writer/director’s unbearably quirky perspective.

Reviews

Dear Evan Hansen

The film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen is a solid gateway towards introducing movie goers, like me, to the award-winning stage production its adapted from.  The movie creates curiosity and builds interest for those who have been wanting to see it and missed out on the opportunity to do so.

Reviews

Best Sellers

Films are rewarded when they think outside the box and resist their genre’s conventions.  But sometimes, a movie can remind us of how narrative prerequisites can be misinterpreted as cliché by indifferent filmmakers.

Reviews

The Card Counter

Much like an expert poker player, writer/director Paul Schrader underplays The Card Counter.  Instead of a flashier approach that boasts with style, Schrader captures the subdued focus and routine of a gambling sub-culture and its players.  One of those players being William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former serviceman who invests in high-rolling card games to keep himself distracted.  It’s an efficient, time-consuming past-time that prevents William from possibly falling back into bad habits.

Reviews

Mogul Mowgli

By: Trevor Chartrand Director Bassam Tariq and actor Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler, Sound of Metal) are the co-writers of BBC Films’ Mogul Mowgli, and together they explore the concepts of family, tradition, and cultural identity/responsibility with their recent collaboration.

Reviews

Pig

Michael Sarnoski’s feature-length directorial debut Pig is about a recluse truffle hunter (Rob played by Nicolas Cage) who is need of answers after his truffle-finding pig is stolen – the John Wick comparisons are unavoidable.  Both movies feature an actor-turn-cult icon playing an enigmatic strong-but-silent type who has the main motivation of reuniting with their animal companion.  It’s already been clarified by audiences who have embraced Pig that Sarnoski’s movie couldn’t be more different, with…

Reviews

Creation Stories

Not very often do audiences receive a biopic as pointless and embarrassing as Creation Stories.  Then again, the filmmaker  could still benefit from a turkey like this.  If they believe their biopic holds valuable nostalgia or fan service, ham-fisted qualities can be forgiven by movie goers, allowing the movie to even win Oscars.  It worked for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Reviews

Zola

Zola, to an extent, is experimental with its narrative.  While it flows coherently, the film is very much still in tune with its source material – a series of tweets explaining a story that’s “strange yet true” – and presents itself as someone spinning you a wild yarn (intercut with tangents and outbursts).