There is a lot of razzle dazzle in Elvis and it honestly made me not care about some of the movie’s very large flaws. I had a great time watching this movie even though most of the criticisms I and others have are valid.
Month: June 2022
Brian and Charles should have stayed as a short
Just because you can make a short into a feature length film, doesn’t mean you should.
Cha Cha Real Smooth slides into theaters and AppleTV+
As he demonstrated with Shithouse, Cooper Raiff is so incredibly great at making deeply sentimental movies about the extremely emotionally available as they experience fleeting life-changing moments that you suspect he gives them silly titles as a handicap. Writing, directing, and casting himself in a starring role with Dakota Johnson as his love interest is enough to make you hate the upstart auteur if the results weren’t such an absolutely joyous delight.
Lightyear brings Pixar back to theaters on a ride to infinity, if not beyond
At long last, Pixar returns to theaters with “the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on”. It’s less complicated that it seems, but nevertheless a blockbuster that’s fun for the whole family.
In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, sex is as revealing of the characters as it is of the flesh
Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack shine in a character study about sex that, while largely confined to a single room, is vast in its emotional depth.
SIFF favorite All Sorts gets a red carpet premiere tonight at the Egyptian
The road from conception to production to premiere can be long and winding for any film, let alone a regionally-filmed indie, and all the more so for one whose launch is muddled by something like a global pandemic that drastically disrupted theatrical releases. Such is the case for J. Rick Castañeda’s All Sorts, which was filmed in Central Washington way back in 2018. When it had its virtual premiere during SIFF 2021, it was a consensus favorite at the SunBreak.
Jurassic World Dominion: the dinosaurs are big, it’s the pictures that got small
Somewhere around the sagging midpoint of the latest installation the Jurassic franchise, Laura Dern’s “iconic paleobotanist” Ellie Sattler pauses to cuddle a baby triceratops nasutoceratops bound for a life in captivity in yet another dinosaur refuge. Delighting in the infant creature’s wide eyed attention, she muses “It never gets old, does it?” If only the filmmakers shared that reverence or even a fraction of Dern’s rare longstanding capacity to really see the dinosaurs and convey a true sense of wonder, this closing chapter might have been anything other than a long perfunctory drag.
With Benediction Terence Davies bears poetic witness to the life and loves of Siegfried Sassoon
In what’s becoming an ongoing series of autobiographically-influenced autobiographies of influential poets, British director Terence Davies follows up his stirring 2016 portrait of Emily Dickinson (A Quiet Passion) with the story of decorated turn-of-the-century war poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Fire Island is an unexpectedly soulful look at LGBTQ+ relationships
Even though Pride month is just starting, there’s a boatload of fantastic films and shows ready for binging to satisfy even the most prolific watchers and Fire Island is among the best. For a group of five friends, chosen family really, Fire Island (a little plot of land off the coast New York) is their respite; a place to find freedom and uninhibited fun. With any party there’s always drama, and Fire Island in the summer is one massive party all day and all night, so drama aplenty.
In Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg makes a triumphant return
While imperfect in execution, there is no escaping how Cronenberg more than has the chops to conduct an orchestra of the flesh like no one else can.