Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Film Festivals, Movie Reviews

It Was Just an Accident Review

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It Was Just an Accident

  • Director: Jafar Panahi
  • Writer: Jafar Panahi
  • Starring: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr

Grade: A-

Getting any film made, even under the best of circumstances, is a small kind of miracle. For auteur Jafar Panahi, getting a film made under the Iranian regime is another kind of miracle entirely – not to mention an active act of resistance. Panahi has faced difficulties making films before (his last film, No Bears, was made while he was under house arrest). But It Was Just an Accident is as openly critical towards his government as possible, and presents a moral and existential quandary that anyone can relate to when living under fear.

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Movie Reviews

After the Hunt Review

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After the Hunt

  • Director: Luca Guadanigno
  • Writer: Nora Garrett
  • Starring: Julia Roberts, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ayo Edibiri, Andrew Garfield, Chloë Sevigny

Grade: C

Luca Guadagnino has been a hard-working director for the past couple years. Having three films released within two years of each other, he is putting out films at a rate unlike most filmmakers working today. His latest, After the Hunt, sees what is possibly his biggest and most ambitious film yet, unabashedly delving into modern-day topics with honesty that many filmmakers have yet to do.

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Film Festivals, Movie Reviews

Good Fortune Review

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Good Fortune

  • Director: Aziz Ansari
  • Writer: Aziz Ansari
  • Starring: Aziz Ansari, Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Stephen McKinley Henderson

Grade: B-

Actors becoming directors has become a more common trend in recent years. With Scarlett Johansson’s debut film, Eleanor the Great, releasing only a couple weeks ago, and Bradley Cooper set to release his third feature, Is This Thing On?, in December, actors have been inspired by their on-set experience to direct their own movies. Aziz Ansari is the latest actor-turned-director with his film Good Fortune, an absurd comedy that nails the current state of America.

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Film Festivals, Movie Reviews

Rental Family Review

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Rental Family

  • Director: Hikari
  • Writer: Hikari, Stephen Blahut
  • Starring: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto, Shino Shinozaki

Grade: B

There are over 300 companies today throughout Japan employing actors, not for film or television roles, but as ordinary people helping other ordinary people to get through the day. Rental Family explores the almost too bizarre to be true phenomenon and the emotional toll it takes from both sides. It’s a slam-dunk premise for a weepy dramedy, but director Hikari’s film is too unfocused to be as resonant as intended.

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Movie Reviews

A House of Dynamite Review

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A House of Dynamite

  • Director: Kathryn Bigelow
  • Writer: Noah Oppenheim
  • Starring: Idris Elba, Rebecca Fergason, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Kaitlyn Dever

Grade: B

Since beginning her career as an action director, Kathryn Bigelow has garnered considerable acclaim with recent films that delve into more dramatic territory. Since becoming the first woman ever to win the Best Director award at the Academy Awards for The Hurt Locker, she has become a filmmaker whose films are on the Oscars’ radar. Seven years after her last feature film, Detroit, her upcoming movie, A House of Dynamite, appears to be her next film aiming for Oscar nominations, and focuses on the dangers of nuclear weapons in a fast-paced and digestible manner.

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Movie Reviews

Urchin Review

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Urchin

  • Director: Harris Dickinson
  • Writer: Harris Dickinson
  • Starring: Frank Dillane, Megan Northam, Shonagh Marie, Harris Dickinson, Joel Lockhart, Diane Axford, Angela Bain

Grade: B+

It’s always a risky gamble when a prominent actor tries their hand behind the camera for the first time; for every Good Night, and Good Luck, there’s a hundred other Leatherheads. There’s no clear recipe for success, but first-time writer-director Harris Dickinson’s clearly defined vision is what makes Urchin an impressive statement. In fact, Dickinson avoids many of the fatal pratfalls which often lead to actor-directed projects.

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Movie Reviews

The Lost Bus Review

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The Lost Bus

  • Director: Paul Greengrass
  • Writer: Brad Ingelsby, Paul Greengrass
  • Starring: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson

Grade: B

Paul Greengrass, Hollywood’s most efficient auteur of ripped-from-the-headlines dramatizations, returns with one of the most harrowing and stressful films of the year in The Lost Bus. Aside from his work on the Bourne franchise, Greengrass’s greatest successes have come from films about real people overcoming the odds to survive, like Captain Phillips and United 93. His latest covers a recent, well-publicized event, and though the life-or-death stakes are often enough to sustain the film for long stretches, it’s not enough to overcome its limitations.

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Movie Reviews

The Smashing Machine Review

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The Smashing Machine

  • Director: Benny Safdie
  • Writer: Benny Safdie
  • Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader

Grade: B-

Boxing is an inherently cinematic format, a sport where one man or woman puts their mind and body on the line in a quest for glory. Mixed martial arts cranks the sport and its stakes up exponentially, and writer-director Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine spares nothing to show the inherent brutality and all its costs. Here is a sport where blood, sweat, tears, and a broken bone or two literally comes with the territory. But it takes more than raw physicality to make an enduring MMA film, and it requires a deeper story worth telling to break the mold of the typical sports drama.

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Movie Reviews

Eleanor the Great Review

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Eleanor the Great

  • Director: Scarlett Johansson
  • Writer: Tory Kamen
  • Starring: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, Rita Zohar

Grade: B-

As an actress, Scarlett Johansson has proven to be a visionary in film throughout the past couple of decades. With roles in movies like Marriage Story and Her, she has shown herself to push film to emotional heights that not many other actors could achieve, so it is no surprise that she has finally taken on the role of director in her debut, Eleanor the Great. 

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Movie Reviews

Swiped Review

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Swiped

  • Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg
  • Writer: Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Bill Parker, Kim Caramele
  • Starring: Lily James, Ben Schnetzer, Myha’la, Jackson White, Dan Stevens

Grade: D+

For the past 15 years, Hollywood has been chasing what crystalized so perfectly in The Social Network, and Hulu’s Swiped represents yet another misguided attempt to capture lightning in a bottle. There have been some wins here and there: films and mini-series like Blackberry or The Dropout that have successfully mythologized the almost Shakespearean struggles between the geniuses who created the companies or tech we’re all familiar with and those who sought to bring them down. But for every one that breaks through, there are a thousand more imitators that are instantly forgotten – and that’s not including the countless documentaries made on the same subjects. Though, if you went into a straight-to-Hulu release written by Rachel Lee Goldenberg (who also directs), Bill Parker, and Kim Caramele, expecting quality comparable to David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film, somebody lied to you along the way.

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