“What is crucial to its success is the way Mills and The National reach outward just as much as they do inward, using one woman’s painfully ordinary life to commemorate the differences and the commonalities that define the waves, cycles, memories and echoes of human life.”
“‘Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale’ can’t escape feeling like a zany music video concept, lacking the energy or plot to sustain a feature. For all the beauty and allure that FINT’s wacky film offers, the emptiness strikes hardest, possibly not in the way the director intended.”
“Despite entertaining directorial flourishes often accompanied by striking stock footage cutaways — from Carl Sagan to a history lesson on African American hair care products — Russo-Young can’t set her hooks into much beyond the postcard images of the Big Apple.”
“As a whole, ‘John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum’ is a fun romp and continues the Greek/pulp mythology set up in ‘John Wick: Chapter 2.’ In future installments, Stahelski might want to tone down the campiness, otherwise the series will lunge into self-parody.”
“Food, particularly junk food, plays a large role in ‘Chungking Express’ by signifying the type of sweet but ultimately fleeting connections (and self-doubt) that occur so frequently for the characters in the bustling Chungking Mansions.”
“Jim James’s third solo album, ‘Uniform Distortion,’ is a return to his musical roots. After two releases of pulsating psychedelia channeling the darker realities of modern existence, James recaptures the restless exuberance of early My Morning Jacket. That’s not to say James has turned a blind eye to the world around him.”
“While ‘Jackie Brown’ does revel in nostalgia and feature its fair share of firearms, it’s a much more subdued, nuanced and mature film than any of Tarantino’s previous works, or any other production within his entire filmography.’
“One of the greatest pleasures of ‘See You Yesterday’ is that the challenges and complexities of the jumps get better as the story unfolds.”
“While Springsteen takes the American dream and helps everyone navigate through its dismantling, Chadha packs it all up with ‘Blinded by the Light” and makes it speak to an entirely different country and a whole new generation.”
“Those seeking some deep-dive exploration into Tolkien and his process will likely get more out of a standard biography or documentary. As it stands, ‘Tolkien’ is a merely adequate celebration of the author and the power of art.”
