REVIEW: The Grifters [1990]

“He was so crooked he could eat soup with a corkscrew” My first Stephen Frears film was High Fidelity and I loved it. A couple years later came Dirty Pretty Things and my reaction was the same. Here was a director I must keep tabs on as well as peer back towards everything pre-2000 to make sure I knew which titles to search out. The one that popped out most—despite still taking me twelve years to finally watch it—was The Grifters. Its pedigree was impeccable with a pulpy noir style…

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LOCARNO16 REVIEW: Where Is Rocky II? [2016]

“You can Hollywood anything” It was around the time Pierre Bismuth won his Oscar as an original story creator on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that he stumbled upon an unknown work by Edward Ruscha via a BBC documentary. This tape captured the artist as he created a fake rock dubbed “Rocky II,” a fiberglass/resin creation that ultimately replaced “Rocky I” once it was proven unsuitable for longevity in the desert (having been manufactured from wheat paste). It’s a fascinating discovery—a piece by a renowned figure that nobody’s seen…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: The Eyes of My Mother [2016]

“Why would I kill you? You’re my only friend.” This is isolation, suffering. It’s also normal. We on the outside see Nicolas Pesce‘s debut feature The Eyes of My Mother as the former, young Francisca (Olivia Bond) swimming in a pool of abject dread as death proves a natural evolution for all living things. For this girl, however, nothing depicted onscreen is wrong. Nothing is out-of-place. She’s the daughter of a former Portuguese surgeon, a mother (Diana Agostini) who was as much a guardian and teacher as she was a…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Shelley [2016]

“But it’s not just about the money” Everything starts so innocently that you’d be hard-pressed to realize Ali Abbasi‘s Shelley is a horror film besides the score’s dread-inducing soundscape rising to a deafening level of static. Sure the setting’s weird with Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) living in the Danish woods without electricity or running water far-removed from civilization, but the world’s fill of eccentrics. They’re actually quite nice, bringing in a new maid (Cosmina Stratan‘s Romanian single mother Elena) with open arms and warm smiles. It…

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REVIEW: Do Not Resist [2016]

“It isn’t just us. It’s everybody.” First-time director Craig Atkinson‘s Do Not Resist could easily have become an agenda piece highlighting one viewpoint of the escalating militarization of America’s police force above another. His footage on the ground at Ferguson during the protests of Michael Brown’s murder and numerous glimpses inside deliberations of city, state, and federal commissions seeking to bolster defense and/or question why leans towards the opinion that the country is growing more and more totalitarian. If he added talking-head interviews from liberal experts with leading questions that…

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REVIEW: Supot [2016]

“What if I can’t stand the pain?” For some rural villages in the Philippines circumcision is a rite of passage for young boys. We’re not talking surgical removal by a doctor as a baby, though. This tradition takes place at age ten by a designated patriarch with a sharpened blade and rock. Each boy soaks in water to soften the foreskin, chews some guava leaves, and looks up into the sky as the knife comes down. To us it’s barbaric; to them it’s an evolution towards manhood. When cut you…

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REVIEW: Jason Bourne [2016]

“And I heard you got hacked” In the nine years since Matt Damon last played amnesiac black ops assassin Jason Bourne, (eleven movie years considering the character exclaims he’s been running for three in The Bourne Ultimatum after The Bourne Identity bowed in 2002), there’s been a lot of chatter about making a reunion work only to have the actor and director Paul Greengrass emphatically say, “No.” It was with good reason too because they knew throwing a sequel together without a quality story that did justice to the original…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: I Am Not a Serial Killer [2016]

“Nightmares are nothing, man. Those pictures gave me a therapist.” Often lumped into the Young Adult category to the chagrin of author Dan Wells, I’m not sure I know many parents who would like to have their fourteen-year old child heading to theaters with friends for the cinematic adaptation of his debut I Am Not a Serial Killer. The first of what has now spiraled into a quintet of books surrounding John Wayne Cleaver; its story introduces the character as a clinically diagnosed sociopath attempting to survive adolescence within a…

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REVIEW: The Bourne Supremacy [2004]

“It’s easy. She’s standing right next to you.” The idea that a sequel can best its predecessor is one that many people believe impossible save one or two exceptions to prove the rule. We’re talking The Godfather: Part II caliber stuff—prestige pieces with weight behind them for critical acclaim and box office success. So you may find me hyperbolic to say this, but I think The Bourne Supremacy belongs on this ultra short list. Don’t demean it by exclaiming how an action film doesn’t deserve to sit alongside a Francis…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Realive [2017]

“He sacrificed a remarkable woman for an inadequate dream” It’s been humanity’s dream since the dawn of time to find the fountain of youth: immortality. To live forever is the ultimate success for humanity’s optimistic idealism. We witness the pain and suffering death creates, constantly trying to distance ourselves from it by forgetting how our lifespans’ brevity makes them special. It’s in death that we see who truly loves us and whom we hold closest. For someone like Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) death can even become a celebration. The sting…

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REVIEW: The Bourne Identity [2002]

“I guess you’re not home” It’s interesting to go back and watch Doug Liman‘s The Bourne Identity after so many years and sequels because it’s so unlike what Paul Greengrass accomplished during his tenure at the helm. The action scenes seem almost quaint in comparison with quick cuts and loud thuds. The kinetic excitement of extended take sequences is absent, replaced by choreographed images rather than limbs. It just goes to show how different the series’ origins were with espionage and spy thrills trumping the subsequently explosive hand-to-hand combat. This…

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