There’s a blissful ignorance on display throughout Marry Me that is simultaneously discomfiting and wistful, its flowery romance presented though a lens of casual globe-hopping, packed concert venues, and glitzy nights on the town. Part of that is surely because it was shot pre-pandemic, another in the long line of films that have been sitting […]
Author: Jason McKiernan
Bergman Island
As Chris and Tony make their way from mainland Sweden to the beautiful shores of Fårö Island, there’s an unmistakable sense the journey is transportive. Maybe it’s the general difficulty of the trip – traversing narrow roads, locating a port, parking on a boat, and floating casually to the island – but it’s hard to […]
Mass
There are few topics more galling and volatile than gun violence, no emotional terrain more ravaging than the murder of a child, and no venue more uncomfortable to explore all of the above than a small, sterile room. In a feat that is equal parts daring and frustrating, Mass centers both its narrative and its […]
Dear Evan Hansen
A film adaptation of Broadway sensation Dear Evan Hansen was likely inevitable, but on the basis of the resulting film, perhaps the forthcoming reckoning was just as inevitable. Not only is this particular musical difficult to translate in a cinematic context, its basic story represents such a dangerous tonal balance, regardless of the medium, that […]
Language Lessons
Once upon a time, unconventional long-distance friendships were nearly impossible to create and sustain, but the digitization of the world has made it possible to circumvent the nagging issue of distance with the onslaught of video chat services like Skype and Zoom. Now, thanks to the last year-and-a-half of intermittent isolation, these connections are more […]
The Year of the Everlasting Storm
In a world so vast and varied, sometimes it takes a tragedy to remind us how connected we are. A once-in-a-century pandemic fits that bill. Even as cultures remain divergent, lifestyles vary, and customs clash around the world, the sudden onset and rapid spread of COVID-19 brought us together even as it, quite contradictorily, forced […]
Candyman (2021)
The conceit behind the legend of Candyman is that it – or “he” – can only survive through the persistent retelling of his story. That terrifying specter can only thrive if he’s permitted to linger in our collective subconscious. But there’s another perspective to the story, a view from the other side of the mirror. […]
Ema
Pablo Larrain’s last film, Jackie, was a film whose ending seemed like an ongoing cascade of concluding imagery, its many blended themes finally untangling, and each given its own singular final flourish. It felt like the film ended for 15 minutes straight, but oh, what an ending. Conversely, Larrain’s latest film, Ema, feels like it’s […]
Behemoth
If you were to take a casual glance at the promotional poster for Behemoth, and you catch a glimpse of the impressively nasty looking creature that figures prominently on that poster, you might get a charge of excitement for what looks like an ornately gruesome creature feature. You’d be wrong. No, Behemoth is not a […]
CODA
CODA lives on the very thin and dangerous line between transcendent crowd-pleaser and overwhelming manipulation. In fact, its screenplay functions like a constant one-two punch, disarming the audience with a heavy dose of conventional schmaltz before delivering a blow of deeply resonant emotion. Its rapturous response at this year’s Sundance Film Festival – where it […]
The Suicide Squad
Maybe it’s just the source material? That’s one plausible conclusion to reach on the back end of The Suicide Squad, James Gunn’s quasi-sequel, quasi-reboot (rebooquel?) to the unmitigated disaster that was David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad, since the new film falls prey to the same minefield that blew up the original. Mercifully, Gunn’s film at […]
Pig
We open on a green, misty forest somewhere in Oregon. Out there, isolated in the depths of the foliage, there sits a cabin, ramshackle and isolated, where we follow the apparent daily customs of a grizzled man…and his loyal pig. There’s a certain shabby enchantment to the environment, so removed from our everyday understanding of […]
Whirlybird
Whirlybird is a portrait documentary that operates on three different levels. First, it’s a sprawling chronicle of the rise of “eye-witness” news in 1980s Los Angeles. More acutely, it charts the use of helicopters as a primary tool of news organizations to capture and transmit live footage for sensationalistic stories. Most intriguingly, however, the film […]
Ride the Eagle
Ride the Eagle is not a bad movie, but one that’s so aggressively mediocre that it starts to seem bad after a while. This very streamlined man-child-comes-of-age lark is so inoffensively relaxed in its perfunctory set-up and payoff that it’s difficult to loathe, but eventually the relaxed vibe starts to feel like coasting, at which […]
Nine Days
We are each the main character in our own story. And in life’s more chaotic moments, it’s easy to think we’re living through our own TV show. Moments of high drama flatten our spirits. Our embarrassments function like screwball comedy. Moments of unspeakable irony make us wonder who’s turning the screws. Each day is a […]
Old
There is a movie inside Old that flows organically out of its characters, driven by their fears, desires, and regrets, generating a clear-eyed and affecting metaphor for the speed with which life passes us by, and our inherent unwillingness to slow down long enough to savor every moment. It’s as eloquent a thematic underpinning as […]
Space Jam: A New Legacy
The prevailing critical logic on Space Jam: A New Legacy is that it’s bad. And…yeah, that basically tracks. More intriguing than general derision, though, is exploring precisely how the film ended up in its current form, a melting pot of contradictory aims so dissonant that any chance at basic coherence was dashed at the conceptual […]
Holler
Holler is a film that seems to have an uncanny psychic link to its characters and environment, a kind of synthesis between form and subject that can’t be manufactured, only felt. Portraits of Rust Belt desperation are quite popular in the industry of late, to the point that Appalachian Misery Porn should be designated its […]
What Lies West
What Lies West is a battlefield on which the screenplay’s earnest human insights war against the film’s inherent formal limitations. The ultra-low-budget feature was clearly made with love, but also under such restrictive stylistic and technical circumstances that it becomes difficult to look past those distractions and into the eyes of the characters. It’s hard […]
Four Good Days
Four Good Days strains itself to convey a hardened tale of mother-daughter turmoil through the lens of a bleak addiction drama to the point that it eventually feels like a dirge deliberately inflicted upon the audience. There’s incredible value in an unflinching cinematic portrayal of difficult material, but Rodrigo Garcia’s film seems hellbent on wallowing […]