Navalny
My Octopus Teacher, Summer of Soul, and now Navalny. On March 12, the submission officially joined fellow recent Oscar winners when it received the award for Best Documentary. The win wasn’t a huge surprise. It was slightly favored to win over the other nominees. The feature had already won the top award at the Producers […]
Argentina, 1985
Do you love politics, history, and courtroom dramas? Argentina, 1985 is a perfect blending of the three. The title is an accurate description of the time and place. The country has recovered its democracy after seven years of a military dictatorship called the National Reorganization Process. The current President has ordered the former commanders to […]
Close
Belgium’s submission for Best International Film at the 95th Academy Awards garnered enough votes to be one of the five nominees. This is only the 8th time the country has made it into the category. The last instance was when The Broken Circle Breakdown had a spot at the 2014 awards. Belgium has yet to […]
Living
What would you do if you had six months to live? That is the question faced by Mr. Rodney Williams. The repressed civil servant ekes out a passive existence in the county planning department in 1950s London. When Williams is diagnosed with a fatal illness, he initially feels his life is over. Rather than tell […]
Fire of Love
Katia and Maurice are a married couple who share a passion. They’re volcanologists from France. As you probably can deduce, that’s a scientist that studies volcanoes. The Kraffts are geologists that focus on their incendiary formation and explosive activity. They travel the world looking for the next eruption. The beauty of this documentary is twofold. […]
To Leslie
There’s an appealing lo-fi aesthetic to this immersive character-driven drama. Screenwriter Ryan Binaco (3022) was allegedly motivated to pen a tribute to his mother’s life. He reportedly drew inspiration from the 1970 movie Wanda by Barbara Loden as well. However, this portrait of a troubled American mother experiencing questionable mental health also suggests other films […]
Aftersun
Aftersun is a moisturizing lotion applied to the skin to soothe sunburn and avoid peeling. The symbolic title announces a deceptively simple movie with significant depth. It opens with rewinding home video footage of a vacation at a modest resort in Turkey during the summer of 1999. The videotape reignites the memories of that trip […]
All Quiet on the Western Front
Author Erich Maria Remarque’s realistic depiction of combat from the perspective of young soldiers in the trenches was a best-selling 1929 novel. As a German veteran of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front connected with soldiers and civilians across the globe. It sold 2.5 million copies in 22 languages in its first […]
Women Talking
From its title, you expect an inspirational tribute to female empowerment. Sadly Women Talking is more frustrating than satisfying. Here’s why. This chronicle is based on a scandal that occurred among the Mennonites of Manitoba Colony. Mennonites are Christians formed during the Protestant Reformation. Neither Catholic nor Protestant, they are often closely associated with the […]
M3GAN
The killer doll story has been a subset of horror for decades. Early instances of the well-worn trope can be found in Dead of Night (1945) and TV’s The Twilight Zone (1959). The 1970s reintroduced the concept with Trilogy of Terror (1975), Magic (1978), and Tourist Trap (1979), but it popped up the most during […]