Film Reviews
For Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, the artist was inextricably joined to his society, both its benefits and its ills. Tarkovsky defined these colloquies between society and an individual artist as “dialectics of personality.” In other words, individual development was indefinably caught-up within personal and distant interactions with a society.
With the #ShortFilmADay challenge, Film Inquiry promotes the watching of short films, and supports indie film and filmmakers! It’s never to late to join! Find more information about the challenge here.
With the #ShortFilmADay challenge, Film Inquiry promotes the watching of short films, and supports indie film and filmmakers! It’s never to late to join! Find more information about the challenge here.
With the #ShortFilmADay challenge, Film Inquiry promotes the watching of short films, and supports indie film and filmmakers! It’s never to late to join! Find more information about the challenge here.
With the #ShortFilmADay challenge, Film Inquiry promotes the watching of short films, and supports indie film and filmmakers! It’s never to late to join! Find more information about the challenge here.
With the #ShortFilmADay challenge, Film Inquiry promotes the watching of short films, and supports indie film and filmmakers! Join us! Let’s Not Panic is an apocalyptic comedy about love and neuroses.
Do you ever feel like you want to watch more short films, but never really know where to start, which shorts to watch, or where to find them? Or, instead, you do occasionally watch short films, but feel you should watch more? Then this is the perfect little challenge for you!
Edgar Ramírez is electrifying as welterweight boxing champion Roberto Durán in the new movie Hands of Stone. Unfortunately, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s routinely conceived, routinely executed boxing biopic is a dull canvas for a performance, slashed in such angry red brush strokes. The movie goes the distance, though not as cleanly or directly as we might have wished.
In life there are many roads to travel and sometimes our paths align with perfect strangers that happen to be exactly who we need to run into at that point in our lives. This appears to be the case with Emma (Mela Hudson) and Judy (Tori Hall). They’re two completely different women who’ve led very different lives, but when both find themselves needing to make a trip to Western Massachusetts, they unintentionally become a part of each other’s journey.
Racism in France has been a long-discussed topic within cinema, from Mathieu Kassovitz’s eponymous film La Haine to 2011’s hit comedy Les Intouchables. In recent days Muslim/Arab citizens have been the focus of racial prejudice from the French justice system; Fatima could not come at a better time with its refreshing take on Arab/French culture. Philippe Faucon adds to this conversation with a portrayal of racial tension in France.
Like much of writer/director Taika Waititi’s other work, Hunt for the Wilderpeople finds humor in asking us to laugh at its characters. They all have some ridiculous traits, and we’re free to have fun at their expense. Some of them are delusional, some of them are myopic, and some of them totally lack self-consciousness.
Chevalier is the uncomplicated story of six men on a diving expedition in the Aegean sea, and how their competitiveness is almost the undoing of all of them. Named as Best Film at the London Film Festival in 2015, it is an extraordinary film and one that is unmissable for anyone who enjoys a deeply disturbing comedy. Despite having no female characters, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Greek comedy speaks from an authoritative feminist voice, forcing hyper-masculinity under the microscope with hysterical consequences.
Kubo and the Two Strings is a genuine masterpiece. The word “masterpiece” might be used carelessly and far too often these days when discussing contemporary movies. At the least, Kubo has fulfilled the conventional definition of “masterpiece” no matter how semantically satiated the word has become, if not entirely forging a new meaning altogether.
Ben-Hur actually opens with the horses getting ready to bolt from the gates for the chariot race. That will seem heretical to audiences familiar with the Academy Award winning 1959 version of the story. Younger moviegoers may not even realize this is a remake, and may not even realize that the phrase “chariot race” used to refer to a big movie’s big action climax.
With an ensemble cast telling a relatable story about friends and lovers, Clea DuVall succeeds with her directorial and writing debut feature film. The Intervention stars Natasha Lyonne, Melanie Lynskey, and DuVall, bringing a But I’m A Cheerleader reunion to the screen, and also adds Cobie Smulders and Jason Ritter, among others. This is a fun and heartfelt story about four couples who gather for a weekend away at Jessie (DuVall) & Ruby’s (Smulders) family vacation house.