REVIEW: Palmer [2021]

Boys don’t play with dolls. After a twelve-year incarceration for attempted murder, Eddie Palmer (Justin Timberlake) is finally coming home. If the main takeaway from that sentence is you wondering how you’ll ever believe Timberlake as an ex-con, know you’re not alone. That was my first thought too. But there are ex-cons who carry themselves as though the violent crime they committed is part of their identity and those who have truly repented and accepted what they did as a tragic mistake that took away a decade of their life.…

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REVIEW: Framing John DeLorean [2019]

He is open to interpretation. I was three when Back to the Future immortalized John DeLorean‘s namesake automobile the DMC-12 (known plainly as the DeLorean since no other model was produced). Doc Brown’s time machine was therefore unsurprisingly the extent of what my mind could associate with the former visionary of General Motors who continuously found himself flying close enough to the sun to harness its power and ultimately be destroyed by it. So it was confusing to watch Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce‘s comical procession of filmmakers who…

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REVIEW: John Wick [2014]

“I’d like a dinner reservation for twelve” If ever there was a film you truly cannot judge by its cover, John Wick is it. We’re talking an action flick about a retired assassin played with stoic Zen by Keanu Reeves (the titular Wick) going on a killing spree against Viggo Tarasov’s (Michael Nyqvist) Russian mob syndicate because the crime boss’ son Iosef (Alfie Allen) stole his car and killed his dog. Sure there’s more emotional heft to this catalyzing event to not think Wick is entirely off his rocker with…

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REVIEW: Don Peyote [2014]

“Her cigarette never burned out” No one can say I didn’t do my due diligence, but I simply can’t wrap my head around Dan Fogler and Michael Canzoniero‘s stoner-tinted, loose modernization of Don Quixote aptly entitled Don Peyote. People often joke about certain cult films “working better” while high and I can’t help thinking this might actually be the optimal state to truly understand Warren Allman’s (Fogler) spiritual journey. I should know as I viewed it twice in the hopes that fatigue rendered me impossibly perplexed after the first screening…

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