Drama

For a film dramatizing an emotionally-loaded real-life story, All My Life doesn’t manage to share these emotions with its audience and make them a part of it. Instead, we’re given a feel-good, greatest hits-style montage instead of a movie. It has the effect of holding one at arm’s length, as if to save them from […]

Rare are the films which sweep you away with intelligent drama, spellbinding performances, and involving photography. Marriage Story is one of these rare films; however, it’s in reflecting on the film where it takes the opportunity to flatten you. This film reminds you love hurts, and the film hurts for love – not in the sense of […]

Destroyer brings to mind another “lone cop on the outs with everyone” film, Rampart. Both films feature detectives estranged from their families amid a crisis of their own making. There are lots of shots of each detective driving alone from location to location, working any angle possible to get out of the hell they’ve made […]

Life is messy, scripted as it proceeds minute by minute. Plans are made but broken by the unintended; rarely do plans ever come to any kind of satisfying fruition. All around us are people walking the same insane, hectic path the world leads us down. We either fight it or we become part of it, […]

A film like The Children Act aspires to loftier purposes, powered by award-worthy performances and subjects which hit us where it hurts. Even the title alone could be taken two different ways – is it a name reference to the UK’s Children Act 1989, or is it a three-word complete sentence concerning the behavior of […]

Submission reminds me of a story someone once told me about a kid she was babysitting. As soon as the kid’s parents left the house, the kid turned to my friend and said something to the effect of, “Here’s how it’s gonna go. You’re gonna let me do what I want, or I’m gonna call […]