A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
Set in the fast-gentrifying Chicago arts scene, this updated-for-2021 slasher/thriller wants you to know that it’s politics are righteous. If it provides a few thrillers, even better. Overall, I liked it, even if there were often times when the politics felt heavy-handed and took away from the scarier aspects of the thriller, even when I agree passionately with the points the filmmaker is making. Still, there was plenty of horror that came through clearly.
A snapshot of a couple in this time, captured naturally and told compellingly.
An audacious directorial debut from Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, Reminiscence drops Hugh Jackman into a science fiction-noir that is less hard boiled and more of a light simmer.
So much of literature, cinema, and religion contemplate the afterlife. What happens to us when we die, where do we go, how are our lives judged? Less spiritual attention — at least in the west — is paid to how and why we get to be alive on this planet in the first place. Something must be in the air: just as Pixar’s holiday release Soul introduced The Great Before as the first episode in a trilogy ending with the Great Beyond, Edson Oda’s festival favorite Nine Days contemplates a process by which souls come to inhabit a life on Earth.
If someone told me a year ago that a long-delayed movie with Ryan Reynolds as a non-player character (NPC) in a videogame would also grapple with the downright exploitative nature of the videogame industry, I would have said they were out of your mind.
The scene is set in a small gated community with perfectly manicured lawns, lavishly decorated living rooms and constantly roaming security guards on Segways. A young man, Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), convinces the powers that be that he should get a pass to work as a masseur within the high walls.
I had never heard of Del Close before learning of this illuminating documentary about his life. Close was a comedic actor and writer, but he’s most known as one of the major authorities on improvisational comedy whose list of proteges is impressive and unparalleled. Clips of Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Robin Williams, among many of their peers, are shown praising Del Close. Bob Odenkirk, Tim Meadows, and Adam McKay are interviewed for the movie and they all have stories about the impact Close had on their lives. He’s probably responsible, at least indirectly, for a supermajority of times I’ve laughed in my life.
Miriam Ghani has unearthed an engrossing bounty of cinema and history from 1970’s and 80’s Afghanistan. Several established filmmakers of the time give first-hand accounts of their experiences making movies while footage from several of their unfinished works are continuously running in the background. It creates a rich tapestry of the frankly mad circumstances of the time.
Every superhero movie is ridiculous on some level. How ridiculous is the new Suicide Squad movie? There’s a character called Polka-Dot Man, whose superpower is the ability to throw polka-dots, and he’s possibly the fourth most absurd character in this movie.
