With a cut and a kick and an upbeat note, Damien Chazelle sure paints a pretty picture of classic Hollywood musical nostalgia, but La La Land is more plastic pastiche than poignant portrait. It’s a technical marvel that’s dramatically weightless, a boldly bravura effort from writer/director Damien Chazelle and his crew that’s also too cutesy…
In the summer of 2007, I sat at the drive-in theater, waiting excitedly for Michael Bay’s “Transformers” to begin (it was my childhood on screen! Peter Cullen’s voice!!), and I was blown away by a trailer that no one saw coming. Choppy home-movie footage showed us a New York party that descended into chaos when…
If you are thinking about engaging in some other activity after watching Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, be sure to leave some time for decompression. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the semi-autobiographical Whiplash is a visceral, adrenaline-pumping musical drama that raises — but does not resolve —…
It is not uncommon to experience a false sense of enlightenment when confined or placed into a stressful setting. You don’t always necessarily understand your surroundings or know how you arrived there, but you will, nonetheless, attempt to find meaning in the situation and overcome. Eugenio Mira’s Grand Piano tries for such an effect. The…
In a post “Bambi 2” world, the irony of titling a picture The Last Exorcism Part 2 is seemingly left unacknowledged in this dour, occasionally effective demon possession chiller. Director Ed Gass-Donnelly’s film seems to wrestle between delivering on cheap jump scares and delving into something considerably more unsettling, the tale of a fundamentally good…
