Category: Storytelling

The Goldfinch The Goldfinch movie is like watching paint dry, but if the paint were REALLY trying to dry. Like, if the paint’s parents paid to have it attend a Drying School…and there’s enormous pressure for it to dry well, and it’s trying REALLY hard. But when people are watching, it gets shy and can’t…

The Notebook Although “chick-flicks” generally get a bad rap, there are plenty of solidly romantic works that don’t need to be diminutive to women or psychotic in their portrayal of relationships. Try L’Atalante, for example; Roger Ebert gave that film 4 stars. I’d heard good things about this film, it was something I hadn’t seen since…

Death Note Although I’ve seen this show many times, I feel like it deserves a review in light of the American bastardisation that lives on Netflix – like a disease completely immune to “cerebral” antibiotics – and that the original show ALSO resides on Netflix in a quality, subtitled form with the better, Japanese voice…

David Mamet’s On Directing Film What a marvelous breath of fresh air! I mean, Jesus, he goes through so many issues I have with modern, American movies and he does so with great humour and startling intellect. This book is more of a transcript from a class Mamet taught at Columbia University, where he workshops…

Mother More appropriately titled “Take A Passive Journey Through A Privileged White Woman’s Struggle To Get Disadvantaged People Out of Her Suburban Home,” this quasi-Biblical, quasi-cautionary relationship and anti-fame tale drudges through an endless array of Snorricam shots and “Rosemary’s Baby” references that lead you to a forced conclusion that any rails-based game would envy.…

Bad Moms Sometimes, I’ll treat myself to an absolutely shitty film. I mean the kind of rubbish that would send others to line up shots of bleach. But the world is a meaningless void of despair and anguish, and the only way I can fill the existential hole in my life is to reaffirm my…

The Night of the Hunter This film is the precursor to the slasher genre. Much of what it did was the very first, and Robert Mitchum’s portrayal of the psychotic preacher influenced media ranging from David Lynch’s filmography to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I understand all of this and recognize its place in film history.…

Bird Box I don’t know why I expect films that set up a difficult “Why” premise to ever answer it. It never happens. Why did aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) arrive, and what did they look like? Why did the hitmen in Pulp Fiction (1994) feel so adamant about protecting the…