Mongrel Media
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (a title that sounds like misheard lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”) is specific enough to be a filmmaker’s vision. The problem is writer/director Radu Jude hasn’t found a cohesive or accessible way to deliver that vision to audiences.
The Humans
The Humans is the type of movie that makes you want to jump through the screen. Not because the film has transported you and swallowed you up, but rather because you want a better seat and you want to tell everyone to speak up.
Julia
By: Trevor Chartrand From the Oscar-nominated directors of RBG, Julia is an endearing documentary that showcases the life and times of the cooking show pioneer, Julia Child. The film takes a biographical look at her charmingly humble rise to fame, from cook-book writer to television star. The documentary has a lot of personality and examines snippets of her off-camera personal life as well as her positive impact on the cooking industry as a whole. This is…
Nine Days
Written and directed by Edson Oda, Nine Days is a metaphysical film that follows a lonely man named Will, played by Winston Duke (Black Panther, Us), who is tasked with interviewing human souls and deciding which one will be given a chance to live. One soul in particular, Emma (Zazie Beetz), is an independent thinker who resists the tasks Will assigns and forces him to examine his own existence.
The Rescue
From the Academy Award winning team who brought you Free Solo comes The Rescue, a documentary that chronicles the 2018 search-and-rescue of the Wild Boars soccer team who were trapped in a flooding cave in Thailand.
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.
Censor
Is a movie still a success if it didn’t come through on its initial promise, yet still left an effective impression? I had a similar reaction earlier this year to Saint Maud, and here I am again with Censor, a horror from writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond that moved me even though I was never truly scared.
398 Days: Hostage
By: Trevor Chartrand Based on a true story, 398 Days: Hostage is the harrowing account of a Danish photographer captured, tortured and held hostage in Syria for over a year. Young and ambitious, our protagonist Daniel Rye Ottosen (Esben Smed) is an Olympic contender with the Danish gymnastics team, until a knee injury shatters his dreams of pursuing the gold medal. Short on prospects and in need of work, Daniel starts his career over with…
