
Leo Matiz/Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Frida (2024)
Carla Gutiérrez's documentary about Frida Kahlo wants to focus on the artist as a person and a woman, rather than get dragged into the higher showbiz orbit of the cultural presence, Madonna-influencer and biopic subject also called Frida Kahlo, famous enough that her unibrow is enough to spark recognition. The result could be termed back-to-basics. In the absence of any third-party commentary, "Frida" uses Kahlo's own letters and diaries, alongside other contemporary texts written by lovers and friends, all read in voiceover by actors. Meanwhile the screen shows still photos, clippings and newsreel footage, plus views of Kahlo paintings. The film, premiering at Sundance on its way to audiences via Amazon, is after authenticity, fact rather than legend, although Ms. Gutiérrez is an editor by trade and knows that assembling a montage is as much of an active manipulation as a dramatized narrative can be.
Continue reading "Art Attacks" »

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MOVIE REVIEW
Captain Miller (2024)
While it feels like a western and looks like a war epic, “Captain Miller” manages to have its cake and eat it. The movie preaches a message of antiviolence while amassing a body count in the thousands. Five bomb and fire experts are thanked in the credits, which understates how many explosions take place and how much stunt work must have been necessary. But despite the extraordinary amount of mayhem, the overall message is one of disgust for violence and the unjust systems which make violence inescapable.
Continue reading "Eye for an Eye, Captain" »

A24
MOVIE REVIEW
A Different Man (2024)
“A Different Man” reunites filmmaker Aaron Schimberg with his “Chained for Life” leading man, Adam Pearson. If you think deeply about it, the new film, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is actually incredibly sweet in its attempt to normalize the actor’s deformity caused by neurofibromatosis type 1. For the uninitiated, though, it’s more like some mashup of “Face/Off,” “The Elephant Man” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It may look like body horror, but it’s a comedy . . . maybe?
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Anna Kooris/A24
MOVIE REVIEW
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
“Saint Maud” auteur Rose Glass returns with something more deliberately A24-y, a gonzo pulp fully in the mode of ’70s grindhouse and its ’90s Quentin Tarantino-led renaissance. Ms. Glass disclosed at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Love Lies Bleeding” that she originally set it in Scotland, but the story just makes much more sense in the States. She ain’t wrong. This toxic mix of unhinged bloodlust and sleazy softcore is basically cinematic apple pie.
Continue reading "Attack of the Killer Lesbians" »

Tobin Yelland/Focus Features
MOVIE REVIEW
The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024)
Spotlighted by Spike Lee in the early aughts, Magical Negro is a well-worn narrative trope involving Black supporting characters whose entire raison d’être is to selflessly serve the white protagonists. We’ve been told this story time and again, in popular movies such as “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and “Green Book,” to name a few. While now well-known and widely accepted in cinema studies, the academic jargon still makes many a white editor uncomfortable and prone to excise it almost instinctively as if it’s unfit for polite conversation. Unfortunately, this time they won’t be able to cop out and strike it from the title of “The American Society of Magical Negroes.”
Continue reading "The Help" »

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MOVIE REVIEW
Merry Christmas (2024)
“Merry Christmas” absolutely captures end-of-year melancholy, with its lonely lead characters surprising themselves with the sudden importance of their chance encounter. This movie deeply knows the difficulty of living with your choices and how a spur-of-the-moment impulse can shape your entire life. But while it does less well with creating a coherent and believable plot, it does an exceptional job of building a mood.
Continue reading "The Nightmare Before Christmas" »

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MOVIE REVIEW
Ayalaan (2024)
At one point someone asks the alien at the center of this goofy Tamil-language science fiction movie why he’s in Chennai instead of America, where aliens always invade in the movies. The alien points out that one creature isn’t exactly an invasion; and anyway Chennai is where he needs to be. A fragment of his people’s technology has made its way into the hands of an evil businessman named Aryan (Sharad Kelkar), who’s using it to drill into the Earth’s core in search of a new sustainable energy source. Only, lots of people have died already because of the technology; and if he does succeed in drilling through, the whole planet will explode. So Tattoo (played in body capture by Venkat Senguttuvan and voiced by Siddharth) has chosen to reveal himself to the most obvious person to render assistance – Tamizh (Sivakarthikeyan, who’s terrific), a failed organic farmer who’s currently working as a kind of party clown. But while he’s bad at business, Tamizh has a kind heart, something Tattoo’s people have been told didn’t exist on Earth. But the emphasis on kindness doesn’t prevent the movie from a genuine nastiness that you just don’t want in a kids’ movie.
Continue reading "Escape From Planet Earth" »

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MOVIE REVIEW
Guntur Kaaram (2024)
At different times various henchmen approach the hero of “Guntur Kaaram” with machetes, sledgehammers or bamboo poles, but Ramana (Mahesh Babu) simply strides up to them and slaps them. That’s it. That’s all he does. He slaps them; and they fall so hard they are incapacitated for the rest of the slow-motion fight. Sometimes he takes one of their weapons and whops them around the head with it. Usually there’s a cigarette in his other hand for atmospheric puffing. There’s some wirework involved but for the most part the impact of Ramana’s fighting style is due to his arrogance. In one sequence he even lights a match for a cigarette off his opponent’s bald head. There’s a great deal of this entertaining old-school violence in a plot built around caste politics, controlling patriarchs and painful family legacy. But despite some wildly sexy dance numbers and an ego that’s off the charts, unfortunately “Guntur Kaaram” doesn’t hang together.
Continue reading "The Unwanted Child" »

Well Go USA
MOVIE REVIEW
I Did It My Way (2024)
The heavy hand of the Chinese censors is painfully obvious throughout “I Did It My Way,” which does its best to tell its violent story within these exhausting restrictions. There’s a sequence showing Hong Kong schoolgirls in uniform who are so high one thinks she can fly and the other doesn’t notice as her friend falls to her death. Brain-on-drugs messaging was passé in American movies by the 1980s; and it’s depressing to see how it’s forced into what should have been a cracking tale of a good man going bad alongside a bad man going evil.
Continue reading "Bounty Hunter" »

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MOVIE REVIEW
The Goldfinger (2023)
Art imitates life; life imitates art; and sometimes art imitates art in ways which take decades to pay out. The new Hong Kong movie “The Goldfinger” does all of this and then some. The title is a reference both to James Bond and the myth of King Midas, the actors are referencing their previous movie together, 2002’s excellent “Infernal Affairs,” which was adapted into “The Departed” by Martin Scorsese, whose “The Wolf of Wall Street” was a clear inspiration for writer-director Felix Chong.
Continue reading "Web of Sin" »