Reviews

Nine Days contemplates the Great Before as the ultimate slow-burn reality competition.

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.

Reviews

For Madmen Only pays tribute to the comedy legend that probably mentored your favorite comedians

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.

documentary Reviews

What We Left Unfinished reveals depth in the golden era of Afghan filmmaking

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.

Reviews

A heartbreaking saga about suicide and, uhh, squads

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.

Reviews

The Green Knight is a tale that grows in the telling

Arriving in theaters this weekend more than a year’s pandemic delay, The Green Knight might be the closest thing to “pure cinema” that I’ve seen in a very long time. David Lowery’s lyrical adaptation of the fourteenth century anonymously-written epic poem sprawls across the screen using all the tools at its disposal, making it it easy to see why A24 held out to assure that audience first experienced it as a theatrical experience. It was worth the wait. 

Reviews

Stillwater plumbs the depths of an American abroad

Although director Tom McCarthy borrows heavily from the Amanda Knox story, Stillwater is hardly a ripped-from-the-headlines docudrama. Instead, he wisely takes inspiration from the situation of a daughter whose study abroad ends with imprisonment for a gruesome murder she claims not to have committed as the jumping-off point for a different kind of tragedy in three acts.