REVIEW: Uncut Gems [2019]

Black Jew power. Writers/directors Benny and Josh Safdie‘s debut feature bowed at Cannes in 2009 to spark a rather prolific career spanning shorts, music videos, documentaries, and critically acclaimed independents featuring an increasingly more familiar stable of actors at the lead. I mention this because that’s also the year that the Safdie brothers approached Adam Sandler with the idea that became Uncut Gems. That’s before Lenny Cooke. Before their breakthrough Heaven Knows What. Before they let Robert Pattinson loose in New York City for Good Time. That’s Hollywood. Maybe Sandler…

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REVIEW: Independence Day [1996]

“We will not go quietly into the night” The man who proved we could only take so many disaster films and yet still made more, Roland Emmerich shouldn’t be denied the astronomical success of the one that jump-started the genre’s big budget revival in the first place. After giving us the rather smart science fiction actioner Stargate, he and writing/producing partner Dean Devlin came up with the treatment for Independence Day as a response to the constant questions about their opinions on alien life. Wanting to take a step back…

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REVIEW: Tower Heist [2011]

“It seems like there’s a gauntlet of lesbians” Josh Kovacs takes care of his own—it’s his job as the manager of a luxury apartment complex in the heart of New York City. With company policy refusing employees from accepting tips, his workers must treat every resident with the utmost care, compassion, and patience. Josh knows every bellhop, cleaning lady, bankrupt squatter, billionaire Wall Street mogul, and septuagenarian lothario within this glass palace and he treats all as family. Just a guy from Astoria, there is something kind and generous to…

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