Film and TV Reviews and Podcasts
Amy Seimetz’s command of the film’s wave-like spread of bleak mental illness is highly commendable. The tone she strikes is an accurate depiction of the feeling one experiences when they’re being blanketed with depression and anxiety.
Yes, God, Yes is not an outright teen sex comedy; it’s much more nuanced because its ultimate goal is more than just seeing its protagonist get laid. At a lean 78 minutes, the film just wants Alice to gain a better understanding of herself and her sexuality. Funny but critical, biting but not mean-spirited, Yes, God, Yes is a promising work for all involved.
Greyhound bears a striking similarity to last year’s 1917, in that there’s a clear endpoint objective at stake, and the characters we spend the most time with are frustratingly opaque. But whereas 1917 took time to reflect and add at least a little characterization between its video game-like checkpoints, Greyhound only stops and pauses for a scant few moments.
Relic, the feature debut from writer/director Natalie Erika James, takes the fragility and fear of caring for a mentally ailing loved one and packages it into an overall enticing thriller with the effectiveness and confidence of a seasoned filmmaker.
By transposing a high stakes political arena onto a small town rural America setting, Jon Stewart’s Irresistible takes a relatively low key approach to its ribbing of the world of campaign finance. It is not simply a “fish out of water” story. Nor does it attempt to romanticize the quaint small town it occupies. Instead, Stewart uses this juxtaposition to call attention to the absurdity of campaign fundraising in a fairly unique manner.
Da 5 Bloods is clearly a project that only Spike Lee could tell, and the way he tells it makes it one of the highlights of the year so far.
Fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt won’t be disappointed by this intimate thriller. His commitment to the material, the character, and his craft itself, is on full display in 7500. Despite being methodical in its dialogue and a slower burn narratively than a more conventional fare, 7500 is a solid thriller centering around a strong lead performance.
There are no talking heads, no title cards (save for the occasional running clock to show the passing of the day), and no opening crawl giving the history of the bar or who these people are. Some stay throughout the entirety of the film, some try to stay and end up drinking too much, and some we only meet halfway through, but each one the Ross brothers feature makes a memorable impression.
The Invisible Man Returns may not be as engaging and thrilling as 1933’s The Invisible Man. But it does have the pedigree of having Vincent Price’s first horror movie performance and what a performance it is. Price enters the shoes of the Invisible Man well and embodies what it means to be this potentially tragic character even if the character beats are a bit muddled on the page.
It’s a tale as old as time: man buys a secondhand deerskin jacket. Man falls in love with said jacket and begins talking to it as if it’s a real person. Man begins converting his entire wardrobe to 100% deerskin. Man’s jacket tells him that it’s so great that it wants to be the only jacket left in the entire world.
Unfortunately, the lack of characterization and an ultimately surface-level bit of social commentary keeps Vivarium from being the strong science fiction thriller it could have been.
Despite its flaws, Son of Frankenstein still manages to be a more than worthy entry in the Universal Monster canon and an acceptable continuation of the Frankenstein story.
Dracula’s Daughter is a strong follow up to Dracula. Although Bela Lugosi’s performance as the Count drove the original film to iconic status, his absence from this film isn’t felt as heavily as one would expect. Due to a strong story, sharp writing, and careful plotting, Dracula’s Daughter stands on its own while also providing a strong coda to the events of the first film.
Though it underperformed commercially compared to the success of The Wolf Man six years later, the legacy of 1935’s Werewolf of London is indelible even if the film itself is slightly uneven and muddled with too many protagonists.
As with most animated franchises aimed at a younger audience, the sequel is generally used as an opportunity for world building, and director Walt Dohrn literally makes it his primary objective from the opening minutes.
The Obsessive Viewer 