It’s tough to make a truly standout courtroom drama. Most of the celebrated ones are from the 1950s and 1960s, like 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Witness for the Prosecution, and Anatomy of a Murder (okay, that last one might not be as well known, but it absolutely should be!), and the surge…
With each new film, Terrence Malick burrows even deeper into his niche. He’s an artist in the truest sense of the word, with his recent body of work consisting of uncompromising and challenging films that serve as sublime visual poetry for some and patience-burning wastes of time for others. A Hidden Life is his most…
When a film makes me cry (and by cry, I mean tears well up in my eyes and my throat gets tight, full on weeping has only happened once) it is rarely because the film is sad. It hardly ever happens during those emotionally manipulative films that just want to show the hardships of life…
When it comes to cars, my knowledge basically stops at knowing how to drive them. The case could even be made that my knowledge doesn’t extend that far as I am unable to drive stick (I hope you’re reading this dad!). So even with the talent involved in Ford v Ferrari and a general excitement…
Trey Edward Shults is quickly making a career out of absolutely shredding his audience’s nerves. With Waves, he takes his experience with psychological thrillers and applies it to a family drama. It’s his most ambitious effort, both in narrative and form, and while it mostly pays off, the result is unfortunately uneven. Bolstered by a…
Investigative journalism films directly appeal to me, mostly because I love movies about everyday people being good at what they do for a living – the first horse training sequence in The Rider brought me to tears, for instance. I was excited for The Report, because it bears most of the genre’s conventions, but also…
Sometimes the stories that don’t get made into films can be even more revealing of the dynamics within Hollywood than the ones that do. Though one of the most important American historical figures, until now, Harriet Tubman never received the biopic treatment given to so many other less significant individuals. Born into slavery and later…
Bong Joon-ho has one of the most interesting and varied careers of this century so far. Aside from a couple of relatively straightforward crime-dramas (Memories of Murder, Mother), his work often balances an ambitious concept with humor, social commentary, and thrilling set pieces, to varying results. His latest, Parasite, takes a brilliantly conceived story about…
Rick and Ilsa, Jack and Rose, Mia and Sebastian, and now Nicole and Charlie. Sometimes the best couples in film just aren’t meant to be together in the end. Unlike these other couples, Adam Driver’s Charlie and Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole did get married and shared their lives with each other for many years with no…
Cinema Etc. 