“‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ welcomes a reflection on its Asian-fusion design because western adaptations of Asian culture, even with visible and vocal creative Asian input, will come with a spectrum of orientalism…”
Brian Brems on ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, ‘Da 5 Bloods’ and ‘Trespass’
“‘Land’ is positioned as an exploration of grief and survivor’s guilt — a crowded celluloid space – but the lack of distinctive figures renders Wright’s film picturesque but fallow.”
“‘No Man’s Land,’ Conor Allyn’s earthy effort at a serious revisionist western, is a film of good intentions that goes awry when it attempts to unpack any of its ideas.”
“‘Archenemy’ could easily ditch all the higher concept stuff and simply exist as a dark buddy comedy. As it stands, this is an interesting misfire for Mortimer…”
“Whatever ‘The Witches’ gains from its desire to provide computer-polished eye candy is hampered by the impersonal corporate feeling which results from this approach.”
“As much as I love a good story, the best movies always transport me, in an intangible sense, through the base elements.”
“‘The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ feels like an inadvertent political statement, a continuation of the status quo in the romantic comedy genre. Still, there is something there.”
“While ‘The Black Cat’ does not share many explicit connections with Poe’s 1843 story, both texts use archetypal symbolism to explore painfully intimate experiences (in Poe’s case, addiction and mental disarray, and in Ulmer’s case, psychological trauma).”
“One of the most effective storytelling strategies in Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ is the application of the simple and elegant dichotomy.”
“In my hatred for the Bond franchise, I feel I may have done a disservice to its star. I have always had a tendency to discount Sean Connery as an exquisitely sculpted statue, capable of filling out a tuxedo very nicely but little else.”
“As always, Spike Lee asks all the right questions, and it’s up to us to recognize that even though the answers may not be ones we want to hear, we need to grapple with them all the same.”
“Relishing in its ability to wrong foot and thrill right to its final moments, ‘Bacurau’ is an unashamedly cinematic experience, with its makers playing in a sandbox of tropes and expectations, subverting them to put forward a radical and wholly essential message.”
“It is during the 70s that the disaster film’s most pure and admirable entries were made, bookended by two significantly different stories involving air travel fiascos.”
“In Australia, our cinematic art has been trying to shake us from apathy for 50 years.”
“At its seemingly lugubrious heart, ‘Return to Oz’ is an ode to imagination; a celebration of the weird and wonderful worlds of our own making, in which we find sanctuary and satisfaction.”
“The giddy mayhem might be enough to satisfy a certain segment of the public, but ‘Birds of Prey’ relies too much on its short-burst episodic structure…”
“Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Nightingale’ will not attract the same cult following or breadth of widespread fan devotion as ‘The Babadook,’ but her latest marks significant progress in the filmmaker’s command of story and cinematic language.”
“‘Ad Astra’ joins the likes of ‘Gravity’ and ‘Interstellar’ as one of Stanley Kubrick’s starchildren.”
“Faced with the death of its utopian hopes, the remnants of America’s counterculture split into two tendencies: the pastoral and the criminal. Its despondency was turned inwards and outwards; one side sought to build alternative structures in line with a higher authority, while the other strove to rearrange the wreckage of the existing order.”