There was a popular book written in the late 1980s by Robert Fulghum named “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” It is filled with tried and true lessons about growing up: “Hold hands and stick together,” “play fair,” “look at yourself,” and other snippets of suggestions we learn about early in…
“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph” — Neil Gaiman In the opening of the film, The Power of the Dog, Peter Gordon (Kodi Smit-McPhee, “Dark Phoenix”), a Montana cattle rancher’s future nephew, whispers in…
The juxtaposition of comedy, tragedy and horror is a tricky thing to pull off. Lean too hard one way and the comedy can be inappropriate or just lame and unfunny. Lean another way and the tragedy can be unintentionally comical or painful. And lean the third way and the horror can be silly. Those films…
Though there have been many coming-of-age dramas set against a galaxy of different backdrops, there usually is a moralistic or sociological approach to the experience in which a catharsis can be universally reached. Composer/writer/director Amman Abbasi makes his feature film debut with the latest addition to the genre with a surprising blend of naturalistic techniques…
It’s a well-known fact that most third installments of film franchises do not rise to the level of the first (and often the second). Now, these examples are subjective, of course, but I present as evidence the following pictures: “Rocky III,” “Superman III,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the…
Philosopher Henri Bergson said that once people begin sensing that something is amiss and start looking for answers, “inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to […]” In Personal Shopper, French director Olivier Assayas (“Clouds of Sils Maria”) succeeds in reminding us, as Shakespeare suggested, that there…
1947, and Sheriff Proctor (Danny Goldring, “The Dark Knight”) and Deputy Waterhouse (Ted Levine, “Bleed for This”) are busy dumping two bodies in a lake. After the deed is done, Waterhouse fires Proctor without firing a shot. 30 years later, an elderly Waterhouse is sheriff. His granddaughter, Jacqueline “Jake” Mather (Samantha Isler, “Captain Fantastic”), visits…
