Writer-director Quentin Tarantino has regularly repeated his desire to carefully craft a 10-film filmography. In what would be his penultimate film (counting the two-part Kill Bill saga a single movie, as Tarantino does), his latest effort, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, combines the director’s best qualities and most frustrating attributes to deliver a polarizing experience that has remained on my mind since I left the theater.
Fans of Ari Aster’s instant-classic horror movie Hereditary will recognize a similar framework in the writer-director’s sophomoric film, Midsommar. Although Midsommar has more in common with the thriller and mystery genres, Aster’s imprint is as clear as a sunny Scandinavian day. What Midsommar lacks in scares, it makes up in genuine laughs, captivating lore, and haunting imagery.
Spider-Man: Far From Home marks the eighth time in 17 years that your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swung into theaters for a solo film. It wasn’t until the webhead’s sixth appearance in Spider-Man: Homecoming that you could truly say Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios had perfected the Spider-Man formula. By following Homecoming with the jubilant animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the European vacationing Spider-Man: Far From Home, it’s clear the studio giants understand that with great power there must also come great responsibility.
Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails, two San Francisco natives, met in middle school before working together on a short film and eventually a feature about the unprecedented changes facing their city. Launched as a Kickstarter campaign in April 2015, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is as unique as the story of its production.
Legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s magnum opus, Spirited Away, was released in 2001. Miyazaki’s animation career at his studio, Studio Ghibli, is rivaled by only Walt Disney, and Spirited Away is a big reason as to why.
High Life, the first English-language film by French auteur Claire Denis, made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018. Planned by Denis for 15 years, High Life finally saw a limited release in the United States in April 2019. In comparing the film to genre heavyweights, it is closer to The Phantom Menace’s meandering than A New Hope’s quality. High Life would’ve been better off unrealized.
Screenwriter and director Paul Schrader is best known for writing Taxi Driver and co-writing Raging Bull. With First Reformed, a movie written and directed by Schrader, the filmmaker can step out of Martin Scorsese’s long shadow and add an accomplishment all his own to the list of his most prominent credits.
Featuring a pastel-colored prison bakery, a bear riding a stray dog like Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and a pop-up book leading to long lost treasure, Paddington 2 is pure childhood bliss in a 104-minute package.
In Avengers: Infinity War, the Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), willingly gives the all-powerful time stone to Thanos (Josh Brolin), a galactic-conqueror and freshman-year philosophy major. When Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) questions Dr. Strange’s decision, the sorcerer responds, “We’re in the endgame now.” After 21 Marvel movies, he’s right. Avengers: Endgame is a fitting conclusion to Marvel’s first 11-year cinematic story.
Twenty-nine years after Driving Miss Daisy unconscionably secured the Academy Award for Best Picture, Green Book, a movie informally dubbed the reverse Driving Miss Daisy, took home the same prize at the 2018 Academy Awards. Studios won’t halt production on the Green Books of the world until movies like it are no longer profitable and well received, but the Academy should stop rewarding them. Green Book is entertaining, innocuous (on its surface), and feel-good for the right viewer, but the context surrounding it and the subtext that can be garnered from it change the conversation.
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