Top 100 Films of the Decade: 2010-2019

If you asked me in 2010 which studios’ films would be amongst my favorites over the next ten years, I probably would have answered two correctly: Fox Searchlight (11) and Sony Pictures Classics (7). Those are two independent shingles of big Hollywood names that have been pumping out quality pictures for decades. Next up would have been The Weinstein Company (5), Warner Bros. (4), Paramount (4), Universal (4), and Sony Pictures (3) because they were cinema. So why are they barely beating those other two combined? Because the game changed.…

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Posterized Propaganda January 2020: The Top 10 Movie Posters of 2019

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column (with a special year-end retrospective today) focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. So many posters proved their greatness this year by being bold enough to make interesting choices where composition is concerned. I’m still talking about…

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Online Film Critics Society Ballot 2019

Below is my December 26th ballot for the 23rd annual Online Film Critics Society Awards honoring movies released domestically in the United States during the 2019 calendar year. Each category is ordered according to my preferential rankings. Group winners were announced on January 6th, 2020 and are labeled in red.

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REVIEW: The Last Black Man in San Francisco [2019]

You don’t get to hate it unless you love it. One of the casualties of gentrification in San Francisco over the past half century was the Victorian home that Jimmie Fails’ (Jimmie Fails) grandfather built in the Fillmore District circa 1946. He feels its effect every single day too—enough that he and best friend Montgomery Allen (Jonathan Majors) take the bus to visit it when they know the new owners will be out. While Mont sits across the street to sketch its exterior, Jimmie walks through the gate to touch-up…

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REVIEW: Jumanji: The Next Level [2019]

Wherever they may be. The first cinematic adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg‘s Jumanji brought the board game’s wild jungle environment to its players’ quiet suburbia for a crazy survival adventure. Jake Kasdan and company could have easily done the exact same thing again with their reboot/sequel hybrid Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle due to over twenty years having past since its predecessor’s release, but they chose to breathe new life into the property instead. And it worked beautifully to earn critical, creative, and financial success. They revamped board and dice…

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REVIEW: American Factory [2019]

The future is bright. Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert were in Moraine, Ohio (a Dayton suburb) when the local General Motors plant closed to film a short documentary for HBO Films entitled The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. By interviewing ex-employees to learn how the factory impacted their lives on a personal level and their community on a broader scale, the filmmakers sought to memorialize an era of American history that’s been steadily dying as new technologies and rising costs shift our economic landscape. So it makes…

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REVIEW: Love, Antosha [2019]

I never eat the boogers. In an attempt to comfort after the death of their son, Viktor Yelchin suggested to his wife Irina Korina that they should just pretend he’s off on a very long movie shoot. That’s what Anton Yelchin often did anyway with sixty-plus film and television credits to his name by the age of twenty-seven, but things aren’t so simple when it comes to someone as caring as their child. Because even when he was thousands of miles away, Anton would inevitably call, email, or write his…

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DESIGN: 2019 In Music

Tracklisting:Disc 11. “Skyhooker” • Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow • 01:52 • Luce (OST), Lakeshore Records2. “Dance Monkey” • Tones and I • 03:29 • The Kids Are Coming EP, Bad Batch Records / Elektra Records3. “Pang” • Caroline Polachek • 03:34 • Pang, Perpetual Novice4. “F Delano” • Kishi Bashi • 03:24 • Omoiyari, Joyful Noise Recordings5. “Feel Something” • Clairo • 02:57 • Immunity, FADER Label6. “Problem” • Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine • 03:28 • 8:47, Big Machine / Bell Media7. “Love Has All Been Done Before”…

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REVIEW: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker [2019]

Some things are stronger than blood. The return of Star Wars was always going to include a third trilogy because George Lucas had talked about his Skywalker saga being nine films way back in the 1980s. And since he eventually got chapters one through three on the big screen himself, it was guaranteed that Disney’s plans entailed pumping out chapters seven through nine. So why didn’t they game plan that arc? This isn’t like the Marvel Cinematic Universe where tenuous connections over ten films allow for multiple cooks to be…

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REVIEW: The Song of Names [2019]

Going home to play a song for the ashes. It’s been thirty-five years since Dovidl (Jonah Hauer-King) disappeared in 1951. He was a violinist—a genius virtuoso depending on whom you asked (himself included)—primed to make his London debut in a sold out house courtesy of the man that served as his guardian the previous decade-plus (Stanley Townsend‘s Gilbert Simmonds). One second he had his prized instrument in-hand while friend/surrogate brother/Gilbert’s son Martin (Gerran Howell) told him to relax and enjoy the moment. Dovidl was finally going to show the world…

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REVIEW: Bombshell [2019]

Praise all tangled up in an insult. The downfall of Roger Ailes is a captivating tale because it shows what can be done without glossing over the difficulty of achieving it. The women at Fox News who came forward to put his decades-long pattern of sexual harassment into the public forum had to weigh the truth and their duty to future generations forced into similar positions against the very real fact that doing so could mean career suicide. They had to search within and find the balance between what they…

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