Posted in January 2018

Review: Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Review: Hale County This Morning, This Evening

I exhausted my brain writing about Hale County This Morning, This Evening for The Playlist, so I’m leaving this intro short. Basically: You really need to see this movie. You also need to see it on a big screen, which is something I rarely demand when recommending documentaries. Hale County This Morning, This Evening is fucking beautiful. It’s also … Continue reading

Review: Hostiles, 2017, dir. Scott Cooper

Review: Hostiles, 2017, dir. Scott Cooper

Poor Scott Cooper. This guy, he just can’t make a movie I’m capable of tolerating. I bet he’s pretty bummed. I hated Out of the Furnace; I also hated Black Mass, a movie I took personally as a Bostonian. (Seriously, someone make a fucking movie about Boston that doesn’t hinge on bad accents for once, please.) Cut … Continue reading

The Alienist Review

The Alienist Review

As with Juan Carlos Medina’s The Limehouse Golem, my fondness for TNT’s The Alienist is derived in part because I’m just into this kind of story: Gothic or Gothic-adjacent procedurals, where the protagonist(s) stare head-on into a darkness they’re ill-equipped to fathom due to the constraints of their era they live in. Not that anyone living in 2018 … Continue reading

Review: Crime + Punishment, 2018, dir. Stephen Maing

Review: Crime + Punishment, 2018, dir. Stephen Maing

My remote Sundance rampage continues! (Sundancepage?) From soul-crushing Greek arts farts to a documentary about police corruption in America, specifically police corruption in the NYPD, the largest police in the country. Crime + Punishment is tangentially about brutality, because how could it not be, but it’s primarily about quotas: How arrest quotas are still in play among … Continue reading

Review: Pity, 2018, dir. Babis Makridis

Review: Pity, 2018, dir. Babis Makridis

When we talk about modern Greek cinema, we’re guaranteed to talk about two filmmakers in particular, being Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari. (Aside: Tsangari is a much, much, better filmmaker than Lanthimos.) This is so true that even when we talk about other Greek filmmakers, like Babis Makridis, we’re still talking about Tsangari and Lanthimos, … Continue reading

When a Disposable Action Flick Is Like Comfort Food

When a Disposable Action Flick Is Like Comfort Food

Happy The Commuter day, aka “the day Andy finally remembered to post his The Commuter pieces from last week”! In my second article about Jaume Collet-Serra’s new Liam Neeson action movie, I go all in on my frustrations over how fucking disposable Liam Neeson action movies tend to be. It’s true: They can’t all be The Grey. But … Continue reading