Jack may be the perfect name for a Tom Cruise character. There’s something nondescriptly ubiquitous about him, a bit too scrappy for a John but matching nicely to the common but abrupt Jack. Jack Reacher:
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is critically-hated films that deserve a second chance.
There are no shortage of docs that explore underworlds and subcultures most of us have hardly considered, if we knew they existed at all. These sorts of films, which have been a hallmark of the modern documentary since Salesman and feature subjects as varied as those of Paris is Burning and Murderball, serve both to reveal what is unique about adherents of a particular subculture as well as communicate how they have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. The new documentary Tickled is no exception, but it flips the idea on its ear.
Film Inquiry compiles a list of the movies that are opening in cinemas every Tuesday. Opening this week: The BFG, The Purge:
“Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing … Somethin’ we was born with … Somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone …
Growing up as a first generation Asian American, I looked to television and cinema for hints to “fit in” with all the other Americans, to improve my grammar and English, to embrace the idea of being American. In that transition, I severed some of my Filipino roots. I can understand Tagalog, but I can’t speak it.
The wide world of films have long held a place for the meandering soul-searcher. They’re characters that move aimlessly through the world with no end goal in sight. Perhaps they’ve become disillusioned with the world as it is, or perhaps, like in American Honey, they are too young to know all the directions they could go.
Often shrugged off as a base form of entertainment, the action genre has carved out its place in the cinematic phalanx. Spy capers, heist films or just a good old-fashioned shoot ‘em up have all become, in some why or another, a part of our lives in the form of witty one-liners such as ‘I’ll be back,” Detective John McClane saving Christmas (twice) and The Rock being— The Rock. Memorable moments which have become ingrained in our memories.
Captain Fantastic will likely live or die based on Viggo Mortensen’s performance, as his character is the only one that understands both the isolated world he established for his children and the regular world they must now enter. The hope of what he and his wife were trying to accomplish must be communicated through him, and whatever ramifications come from their decisions will fall squarely on his shoulders. It’s a lonely role in a movie populated by a ton of characters, and it’s hard to come up with a guy more likely to pull it off than Mortensen.
Director Yorgo Lanthimos first grabbed the world’s attention with Alps and the seismic Dogtooth. Recently, he sprung another biting, absurdist satire into the festival circuit with The Lobster. It takes place in a world in which relationships are mandatory; the characters, all newly single, or newly of age, are detained in a hotel that works, basically, as a deadly speed dating service.
You will see the term postmodern to describe the comedy of The Lonely Island, the comedy team responsible for this film and the birth of the Saturday Night Live Digital Short, as you read opinions on their newest film, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It is a vague term that means comedy that deconstructs the art and is self-aware.
It’s been a while since the world checked in on David Brent, the self-described star of the documentary series The Office. Of course, we all know that Brent doesn’t exist and that his documentary was actually a mockumentary television series that aired in the U.K.
I first saw My Brief Eternity at the Wales International Documentary Festival, and such was its impact on me that after meeting the director Clare Sturges, and after writing up the festival itself, I resolved to review it so that others would come to know of it. The short documentary is a joint project between Maggie’s and Brightest Films, the former being a cancer charity, the latter Sturges’ production company. The film is about the Welsh artist; Osi Rhys Osmond.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is movies made for TV.
How many people were having flashbacks to the Toy Story series during this trailer? I mean, the supermarket was very reminiscent of Al’s Toy Barn, and the whole premise of giving inanimate objects complex emotional lives that humans eventually wreck is Toy Story as a whole. Except the things we do to our food is way more messed up than simple abandonment, so I guess Jessie doesn’t earn a sad song until Emily pulls a knife on her now.