Blinds you with its glittery lights and thrumming bass and disarming humor until you’re left on your knees sobbing. Can’t begin to fully articulate how immensely heavy Anora winds up feeling by its conclusion. Sean Baker is always able to tie the humor together with heartbreak, but I think this film is where that blend is especially concentrated and effective.
Sat through the whole credits so I could cry in the dark and really let it settle. I want to…
“And you will see. The beauty and the horror.”
Dread drenched in holiness. Fervor infused with poison. The earth and the heavens colliding to create a river of blood. He has ascended.
For House of Cinema, Joe, Sydney, and I went into the desert to discuss Dune: Part 2!
Really works in its earliest moments as it establishes its characters and the lush island they reside on, but The Wild Robot loses steam through its narrative progression. Part of what is so fun, and funny, about the film is how unflinchingly it depicts the circle of life and the neutrality of loss within that cycle. By the end of the film, that mindset shifts into something much more overly positive, “everything is going to be okay for everyone”, and…
An endless sea of things confronting one another. Grief and duty. Modesty and ego. Doubt and certainty. Most consistently of all, modernity and tradition. In its opening scenes, there is such a devastating sensation when we see the closing of the Pope’s living quarters compared to the removal of his body. In its most intense scenes between characters, amidst the urgent examination of the Church, a Cardinal pulls out a vape and takes a huge rip. It sounds comical, and…
“Why?”
An urgent, demanding question that isn’t spoken until the final minutes of Garland and Mendoza’s Warfare, but whose presence is felt echoing through its 96 minutes long before the end. The make-it-or-break-it nature of Garland’s work lies in the fact that the answer to that “why” is almost always the least of its concerns. It feels almost defiant how much the film turns away from that inquiry, unwilling to sacrifice its commitment to transplanting these events from their experiencers’ memories onto…
Underneath all that carnage and humor, Sinners is imbued with a deep-rooted sorrow that lures you in before plunging its teeth into you. Glimmers of a coveted sense of freedom come forth in a way that feels like someone has stretched their arms wide, ensuring every inch of the screen is filled with its image. Then it slams into a tighter, almost coiled aspect ratio, and it’s like we’ve been shoved right back into the fight. The leaps between these…
My angel girl worships at the altar of ciphers and crime photos. Sleeps at the foot of His diligent work. She studies the scenes like a holy text, fingers tracing every splatter and gash. Her hymns are dead things pleading for mercy. She plucks carnage from the tree and takes bite after greedy bite, tucking it deep inside. My angel girl is full of rotting, nasty things. What an immaculate sight she is.
Less sitting in the dark, more flailing…
An exercise in sustained foreplay.
From Black Bag’s opening tracking shot, it’s clear we’re watching something measured and refined. The desire to cast secrets out into the light so they can be fully seen is at odds with how clouded the very light is, halation ensuring every artificial light source is foggy. No easy answers, no easy resolutions, it’s never so simple with games like this.
Caught myself grinning almost non-stop throughout.
Like staring into the face of God and going mad at the sight. Encapsulates a clawing, desperate hunger. The type that gnaws on its own flesh to stave the pangs of pain for just an instant. Bloody and rotting and so very gothic. Pitch black as the transitionary space, something we cut, pan, fade to often. An extension of the narrative, a reminder that the page has turned, the next chapter begun, the predetermined course continuing along its valiant death…
They basically gave Megatron Sith eyes. That’s dope as fuck!!!!!
Really impressed by how swiftly this got me to fully buy in. Gorgeous animation, impressive fight sequences, and some really solid voice acting. I love the weight that’s applied to the characters. There’s this very tricky line between giving them enough lightness to perform the agility required and enough weight to convey their metallic structuring and the film does a fantastic job of walking that line perfectly. Humor worked very…
CHICKEN JOCKEY XD xD :3 :P ^v^ •̀⩊•́
Been a while since I’ve seen a movie make it so abundantly clear that it doesn’t believe its audience possesses intelligence (by a while, I mean it’s been three weeks since The Electric State came out). Every other line of dialogue is over-explaining every item, every narrative beat, every emotional response. Uses bullshit words like unalive with total sincerity. The emotional core of this is lost in word soup, extremely unconvincing performances,…
At its most interesting when we get to hunker down into how clones can exhibit different negative characteristics of the prime. Timidness, violent inclinations, insecurity, festering rage, all-consuming guilt. A whole lot of human consciousness to shift through and examine under a microscope and at times Bong really magnifies us into these moments. Especially when he shows us the tension between these attributes weighing heavily on each iteration, all while these iterations are offered the most steadfast and committed type…