As rendered in the gut-wrenching “Krisha,” director Trey Edward Shults’ debut film, those with blood ties are hornets that can sting more than their natural counterpart. The within-is-more-volatile notion is elevated in Shults’ second outing, It Comes at Night, that takes place in a world upturned by an unnamed disease. For a while now, 17-year-old…
When I first watched Gleason, at the London Film Festival back in October, there was barely anyone there. “Fair enough,” I thought. It was after all, a mid-week, lunchtime showing, and a documentary about an American football player, who few Brits will have ever heard of. By the end of the film though, the dearth…
Two powerful lead performances drive Fences, a tale about a black family living in Pittsburgh during the mid-1950s, that, while the overall experience is mostly negative, the impact is nonetheless a powerful and emotional undertaking. The screenplay is adapted from the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play by the late August Wilson, which was revived in…
Why Him? The real question is why me? Why am I always searching for the seemingly most elusive item on Earth, not a holy grail or world peace, but a decently funny comedy that can a) make me laugh consistently and, b) not devolve into a juvenile series of f-words, toilet humor and disgusting situations….
Philosophers throughout history have wrestled with the question of ends and means, right and wrong, and good or bad. Socrates said, “It is never right to do wrong.” Others maintain that it is right to act in such a way that it produces the most desirable consequences whether or not it follows society’s rules. For…
Kings, true kings, are superior to nobody; everybody’s their equal. That’s what makes them different. That’s what makes them especial. Kings rule over no one. A king’s true realm is their self. Ben (Viggo Mortensen, “A Dangerous Method”) and Leslie (Trin Miller, “The Invoking”) sought for this kind of kings out of their kin: Plato’s…
As the ragged and haggard anti-hero in Jean-François Richet’s rollicking grind-house showcase Blood Father, lead character John Link is a lost wrecking ball in search of raging redemption despite whatever erratic and intrinsic demons that beleaguered his unstable psyche. Well, this description can also be applied to the relentlessly problematic performer playing this graying, leather-skinned…
