REVIEW: The Score [2022]

Why’s it always someone else’s pain that makes you happy? As Troy (Will Poulter) muses on the car ride out-of-town to meet with “professional criminals” (he and Johnny Flynn‘s Mike realize they’re amateurs at best, still trying to move their way up) and exchange twenty grand for unspecified goods, “score” is one of those words with multiple meanings. Film score. Settling scores. Scoring on the soccer field. Scoring in bed. While it’s as much a monologue to explain writer/director Malachi Smyth‘s decision to title his film The Score as it…

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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: Lady Macbeth [2017]

“We did it” At the back of William Oldroyd‘s Lady Macbeth (adapted for the screen by Alice Birch from Nikolai Leskov‘s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) are the ideas of oppression, power, and the fluidity of both as the oppressed often find themselves clawing their way to a position of becoming oppressor above another more marginalized sect of society. This theme isn’t one that has been solved by any means since the time of 19th century England and its persecution of women as subservient baby-makers to be bought by…

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