REVIEW: Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon [2022]

Forget what you know. Everyone asks Mona Lisa Lee (Jeon Jong-seo) if she has any friends. It’s the first question that comes to mind when confronting a stranger who looks lost and out of sorts with their surroundings because you want to help them find a safe place and the care of people they can trust. Unfortunately, Mona Lisa can do nothing but shake her head “No” because she’s been locked in a juvenile care facility for a decade: catatonic and in a straitjacket due to “violent tendencies” upon arrival…

Read More

REVIEW: Naked Singularity [2021]

Shouldn’t that ‘we’ be us? The title is a metaphor. Naked Singularity. It’s what makes the conceit behind Sergio De La Pava‘s novel so intriguing (the criminal justice system in America is a black hole consuming everything in its path, but, unlike in general relativity where an event horizon shields the act from outside observation, we are helplessly watching as it happens) and why director Chase Palmer and his co-writer David Matthews‘ cinematic adaptation leaves a lot to be desired. Because while the concept remains sound as the backdrop for…

Read More

REVIEW: Alita: Battle Angel [2019]

No one’s greater than the game. This is a film twenty years in the making despite James Cameron being attached from the start. The story goes that Guillermo del Toro introduced the King of Hollywood to Yukito Kishiro‘s manga Gunnm and he fell in love with the book enough to give it permanent placement on his docket. Alita: Battle Angel was first thought to begin production after the demise of Cameron’s television show “Dark Angel” only to have him decide something else was more pressing. Then came the secretive technological…

Read More

TIFF18 REVIEW: If Beale Street Could Talk [2018]

Flesh of each other’s flesh. Fonny Hunt (Stephan James) puts out his arms for a hug upon seeing an old friend in Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry) after too much time and too many men their age have passed. Smiles and laughter enter the scene before they are soon replaced by beers and reminiscing. And then comes the hard truth of absence—the explanation of his disappearance. Daniel had been in jail two years for a crime he didn’t commit and Fonny feels for his plight. Despite anything he could possibly say…

Read More

REVIEW: Deadpool [2016]

“Maximum effort” The fact Deadpool is in theaters should have fans and detractors of the superhero “genre” excited because it signals a burst of creativity within an otherwise stagnant artistic avenue. But don’t think it won’t still be a superhero movie. A lot of talk in the critical sphere revolves around how Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds’ passion project “looks to subvert convention” yet “ends up just another comic book origin story.” Guess what? Deadpool is a comic book character. Just because he’s self-aware enough to mock his world’s tropes…

Read More