When his directorial debut is named for a racial slur (Gook) and his acting credits are highlighted by the Korean Breakfast Club (Seoul Searching, on Netflix and amazing), I had no idea what to expect from Justin Chon’s new film… Continue Reading
Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, her follow-up to the depression allegory (and maybe gay icon) The Babadook, deserves the trigger warning it is given. Take Driving Miss Daisy, make it more racist; add in Lady Macbeth (the costume drama, not the… Continue Reading
In the shadow of critically acclaimed films like Eighth Grade and Lady Bird, coming of age stories have become simultaneously reinvigorated and had a skeptical lid placed on the hormonal jumping beam that are coming of age stories. The all… Continue Reading
I have been borderline obsessed with Stephen Frear’s Philomena, the Judi Dench starring true life story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who hid the story of nuns selling off her son for fifty years and her journey to meet… Continue Reading
Seattle’s favorite hometown direct Lynn Shelton opened SIFF 2019 with a lighthearted comedy skimming the backward inconsistency in the American South. When Cynthia (Jillian Bell) returns to Birmingham, Alabama, with her partner Mary (Michaela Watkins), they find a reverse mortgage… Continue Reading
High Life catapults a storage container’s worth of death row inmates into hyperspace and uses them as fertility guinea pigs: what could possibly go wrong? Claire Denis’ sci-fi experiment takes big swings but when it lands, the passage of time… Continue Reading
Where Sebastián Silva has not perfected the exintricities of American male bonding or race politics, Tyrel stars Jason Mitchell (Mudbound, Straight Outta Compton) as Tyler, the sole black man at a rural birthday getaway in New York. As much like… Continue Reading
Trying to consider the glorious presentation that is Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night—not the Eugene O’Neill play—during dental work is like living a David Lynch version of Little Shop of Horrors. The dreamlike quality of its opposing halves… Continue Reading
While watching The Chilling Tales of Sabrina dance around coven patriarchal fascism, trying to comprehend the emotional impact and cultural mirroring in Christian Petzold’s Transit is becoming increasingly distracting. Taking an adaptation of Anna Seghers’ 1942 story of a man… Continue Reading
Shazam! was my biggest surprise for this weekend. DC finally pulled out a comedic competitor to the likes of Deadpool without the sleaze or Guardians without being slave to a larger storyline. The quest for power and the implications of… Continue Reading