REVIEW: Scenes from an Empty Church [2021]

A Bible and a fifth of bourbon. We all look for signs and we all interpret them how we see fit whether doing so is correct or not and despite those so-called “signs” proving nothing but coincidences to which we’ve ascribed unearned meaning. It’s how we find comfort. It’s how we wake up in the morning. And it’s the point where spirituality and religion intersect before ultimately diverging since the former deals in faith’s freedom and the latter in faith’s commoditization. One allows us to believe what we believe without…

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REVIEW: Late Night [2019]

You’re a little old and a little white. You can imagine how this film would have gone had a white male wrote it. The affirmative action jokes would play strictly for laughs rather than poignant introspection. The strong woman television host would use masculine tropes to service her goals rather than understand that a double standard can’t be weaponized in ways that end up affirming said double standard. And the idea that the fish-out-of-water newcomer entering the fray to shake the status quo could potentially date the “hot” co-worker would…

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REVIEW: Live By Night [2016]

“We don’t get to pick our sins” A scene happens early on in Live by Night where Deputy Police Captain Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson) tells his criminal son Joe (Ben Affleck) that our actions always add up to a conclusion for which we can never predict. The idea is that Joe is a good man—a war veteran with a good heart—who’s simply been disillusioned. Thomas is willing to not crackdown on him despite being fully aware of how his boy makes a living as long as the evidence doesn’t force…

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REVIEW: Jackie [2016]

“When something’s written down—does that make it true?” It’s rather intriguing how we feel we know our presidents. They represent us as a leader of the free world and we in turn love them enough to mourn their passing even when it’s decades after their run in the Oval Office ceased. But what is it that we really know? We only see what they allow. We see the aftermath of important moments—good and bad—but not the decisions themselves. Everything that we know without reading a book comes from what they’ve…

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REVIEW: Inside Llewyn Davis [2013]

“Llewyn is the cat” Can I chalk my ambivalence to the Coen Brothers‘ newest film Inside Llewyn Davis up to knowing nothing about the Greenwich Village folk music scene of 1961? It is after all loosely inspired by the life of Dave Van Ronk, containing aspects of his autobiography The Mayor of MacDougal Street for authenticity. But how much should knowing the setting of a story impact the enjoyment of what’s unfolding in its space? Shouldn’t the success of what the Coens have accomplished live or die by my interest…

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