8.5
24 FRAMES Criterion Blu-ray Review
The Criterion edition of 24 Frames is a fittingly superb tribute to a great artist.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
8.5
6.5
THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK Review
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is formally and aesthetically fascinating, even when its script feels a little incomplete.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
Ken’s Top 10 Films of 2018
Continuing our 2018 wrap-up spectacular is Ken Bakely‘s top 10 films of 2018.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
5.5
THE QUAKE Review
Though the movie is capable, it’s missing the extra push to keep it away from using to the familiar tropes it wants to avoid.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
6.5
FAIL STATE Review
Shebanow’s driving energy is always apparent although sometimes it’s left, frustratingly, just out of reach.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
7.5
FIRST MAN Review
It’s a movie with an unwavering faith in the lessons we can learn from the past, but it shuns inappropriate nostalgia or uncritical revisionism.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
7
SADIE Review
Sadie is, above all, a meditation on life spent without access: to money, to answers, to safe outlets for confusion and anger.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
7.5
TEA WITH THE DAMES Review
The film’s greatest asset is its ability to convey the lively spirit of the conversations without feeling selective or artificially emphasizing points, beyond spare bursts of archival footage or the occasional question posed from Michell himself.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
8
COLD WATER Criterion Blu-ray Review
Cold Water is an absorbing, pensive look at what such desires feel like on the inside, with its handheld close-ups on faces and careful observance at objects and structures, as if to seek answers from everything in equal measure.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
5.5
OPERATION FINALE Review
Operation Finale is the historical film at its most safely crafted, even as individual production elements, such as Alexandre Desplat’s pushy score – heavy on everything from marimbas to choirs – suggest departures from a cookie-cutter approach that aren’t reflected onscreen.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
8
THE WILD BOYS Review
It’s the kind of enigmatic art that contains multitudes but ultimately speaks for itself.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
7
CRAZY RICH ASIANS Review
Crazy Rich Asians is a work of pure intent and wide potential, utilizing Hollywood’s most popular, time-tested devices and razzmatazz with a wise and lovely embrace.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
6.5
TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE Review
As we finally expunge the traumatic memories of The Kissing Booth from our minds, Netflix has delivered To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, a teen comedy just as formulaic, but significantly less appalling.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
5.5
THE MEG Review
Neither inventive enough to wow us, nor lovably dumb enough to cheekily win us over, The Meg winds up in a bland middle, at the intersection where the simplicity of giant sharks and the complexity of tentpole-budgeted film financing and risk assessment meet.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
10
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Criterion Blu-ray Review
A Matter of Life and Death is aesthetically and thematically governed by images of the planets and stars themselves, always greater than individual hangups.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
5.5
EUTHANIZER Review
Euthanizer’s ideas about human interactions through karmic desire often run flat, as the film’s stylistic choices betray the capabilities of its lead actor and what the script has guided him up to that point.
Posted by: Ken Bakely
