REVIEW: Call Jane [2022]

Everyone hangs up the first time. We can assume Joy (Elizabeth Banks) and Will (Chris Messina) didn’t plan on having another baby. Fifteen years between child number one (Grace Edwards‘ Charlotte) and two doesn’t scream intent. That fact doesn’t, however, mean that they didn’t want the new baby. They were happy about the pregnancy. They were looking forward to doing it all over again. Unfortunately, Joy’s body couldn’t comply. She started growing faint around ten weeks and ultimately passed out in the kitchen before finally seeing her doctor. He told…

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REVIEW: 1985 [2018]

“Will you wait for me if you go first?” There’s a lot to like emotionally about Yen Tan‘s 1985 and some things to be desired in execution. It’s a period piece focused upon a conservative Texas family with military man father who sees his differences from his own “tough” Dad as potential weaknesses, a loving housewife mother recently finding the courage to break from her husband’s flawed political and religious zealotry, and two sons carving an identity for themselves despite a volatile environment wholly non-conducive to their wants and desires.…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: First Man [2018]

It’s kinda neat The non-controversy surrounding Damien Chazelle‘s First Man shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows how political parties have appropriated art into their agendas since the dawn of time. Of course they’d glom onto the decision to ignore the lunar flag planting as some “un-American” thing rather than read the script, watch the movie, or ask for clarification—options which would have all supplied insight into the reality that Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer aren’t telling the story of the moon landing. That goal might be the driving force behind what’s…

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REVIEW: Wonderstruck [2017]

It’s never the right time. What do a deaf (from birth) girl in 1920s New Jersey and hearing-impaired (due to a recent accident) boy in 1970s Minnesota have in common besides their struggle to communicate? We’ll just have to wait until author/screenwriter Brian Selznick and director Todd Haynes are ready to let us know. In the meantime we’re made to follow their parallel (albeit five decades apart) paths towards a sense of freedom the adults in their lives simply cannot comprehend. They yearn for more than existing in a world…

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