By: Trevor Chartrand In the delightfully surreal Death of a Ladies’ Man, director Matt Bissonette addresses some hard-hitting subjects in a mature (yet somehow silly) way. This darkly funny film was heavily influenced and inspired by the work of Leonard Cohen, and the late artist’s presence in the film will not go unnoticed. The film explores themes and ideas present in Cohen’s music, and features a soundtrack that includes plenty of Cohen songs.
Promising Young Woman is a provocative call to arms that’s both committed to its cause and impossibly funny. It’s one hell of a feature-length debut from writer/director Emerald Fennell, who has previously acted on the UK’s Call the Midwife and Netflix’s The Crown, as well as wrote for AMC’s Killing Eve.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a melancholic psychodrama with spurts of deliberate awkwardness, but should you expect anything else from writer/director Charlie Kaufman?
Guns Akimbo is a great example of how talented people can turn guilty pleasure entertainment on its ear.
Wendi McLendon-Covey is experiencing a really unique resurgence as an actor. After establishing herself as a quick-witted commedienne on Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, a longstanding role on ABC’s The Goldbergs has propelled her towards more endearing roles. While it’s a different change in pace for McLendon-Covey’s repertoire, she still knows how to bring the laughs. Blush is another career tilt for the actor but, this time, the tone is much darker and stranger than anyone…
Vivarium works as jet-black satire about the pressures of fulfilling roles that have been imposed by a seemingly unanimous understanding of tradition. It’s existentially dour, but these dissatisfied emotions from director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Garret Shanley are supposed to identify how normalized expectations are not so much a failsafe plan for people, but actually a suffocating framework.
Most movies build towards a crescendo, yet the first act of Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy is the climax. But then, instead of gradually hitting new heights, Timpson’s film simmers to a tepid temperature. Despite the outrageous feedback you may have heard about the movie’s wild qualities, Come to Daddy is actually family tame (if you’re used to off-the-wall genre pieces).
A film can sometimes take so many risks, twists, and turns that the movie itself becomes borderline indescribable. Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy falls in this camp, so how do I even begin to discuss it?
Corporate Animals is aggressively heartless, as if it’s in a competition to be the cruelest dark comedy. But in doing so, the film sacrifices itself and proves to audiences just how two-dimensional it really is.
