The nominees this time around confront enduring stigmas, draw parallels to our political climate from history, surmise personal and global crises, and collectively challenge their audiences’ worldview.
Their brevity aside, the assembled nominees for this year’s Academy Awards demonstrate the benefits of working with condensed production cycles based on the timeliness of their selected subjects.
This year’s live-action shorts make a case that they have something to say even if the Oscar telecast doesn’t want to give them the time.
Who Killed Cock Robin is an overwrought mystery on a threadbare premise that can’t find a way to string along its audience.
Jean-luc Godard’s The Image Book continues his late-career trip through evocative and enigmatic video essays with a horrific search for truth in cinema.
A strong cast and unique approach can’t outweigh the safe predictability of Melissa Miller Costanzo’s coming-of-age drama, All these Small Moments.
Somewhat functioning as a journey film and sightseeing tour where the script constantly hops between some of the most “groovy” weirdos New York’s outsider culture can offer up, we bear witness to their inane (possibly improvised) rantings without the film deciding if they are objects of mockery, endearment, fascination or otherwise.
Continuing our year-end list extravaganza is Chris Luciantonio‘s top 20 films of 2018.
Release Date: December 21, 2018 (Netflix)
Director: Susanne Bier
MPAA Rating: R
Run Time: 124 minutes
Although this particular review will fail it, I call on all future reviewers to attempt the “Bird Box Challenge” when breaking down the
So masterfully directed is Time Share that its tale of wolfish sales tactics crosses over from petty satire and enters into emphatic human drama.
Chang-dong’s technique of the aloof and mysterious slow-burn, buttressed by moments of poetic and moving expression, make his latest a must-see.
Buster Scruggs finds a way to bridge the jocular nostalgia of a Hawks Western with the sobering realities of an Eastwood joint in an impressive feat of tonal flip-flopping.
This is absolutely the version of Shampoo to own based solely on the immaculate restoration Criterion has done for Ashby's underappreciated masterwork.
Though unapologetic in how differently it approaches tone, style and narrative from the glossy Argento classic, as a companion piece, Suspiria fleshes out the ideas present in the original and elevates them to a grandiose distinction
Goddard's film proves itself a slick, stylish crime drama that is mainly confused in the structural department.
7.5
Green's Halloween is a return to form for the franchise that feels worthy to close the book on Haddenfield that Carpenter and Hill opened 40 years ago.
