REVIEW: The Virgin Suicides [2000]

Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl. With all the accolades bestowed upon writer/director Sofia Coppola these past two decades, only an idiot would question her worth by saying she’s little more than her Hollywood royalty name. Those who said it back in 1999 as her debut feature The Virgin Suicides made the festival rounds were idiots too. If you’ve ever seen this film you should know the sum of its parts goes well beyond pedigree or accessibility. Whether her name allowed her the ability to collect the wonderful…

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REVIEW: How Do You Type a Broken Heart [2018]

You have to fight. Addiction is a tough topic to do justice with in a short film. I don’t mean that as a commentary on duration, but honesty. The last thing you want to do is have a piece meant to conjure introspection and drama feel like a PSA commissioned by the same companies that supply the drug due to court-ordered awareness laws. So you have to find a balance between the subject matter and the emotionality of the issue. You have to find a way to let characters breathe…

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REVIEW: Entanglement [2018]

Should I have brought you flowers too? **POTENTIAL SPOILERS** There’s a great moment in Jeremiah Kipp‘s short film Entanglement wherein Frank (Lukas Hassel) explains to the second party of a random sexual encounter assumedly organized online (Robin Rose Singer‘s Jenny) how he used to “see” his ex-girlfriend everywhere after they broke up. Screenwriter Joseph Fiorillo has his character describe the epiphany experienced upon realizing this anxious paranoia wasn’t a matter of his going insane. Frank wasn’t projecting this specific woman onto random strangers because he was consumed by her memory.…

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