Review: Will Smith's Oscar hopeful "Emancipation"

please welcome new contributor Ankit Jhunjhunwala...

Will Smith stars in "Emancipation"

by Ankit Jhunjhunwala

It is arguable that all movies benefit from a theatrical experience - though some do more than others. The benefits are not merely technical (superior audio & video quality) but also behavioral. A paying public in a cinema is a captive audience and usually sticks with a film to the bitter end. At home, on streaming platforms, abandonment is easy and, by all accounts, frequent. This latter practice is likely to hurt Emancipation, which concludes with a sensational Civil War action set piece that is sure to rouse audiences. Only they have to get through 90 minutes of airless tedium to get to it.

Emancipation is a project undoubtedly born out of noble intentions. The infamous Whipped Peter photograph, showing the horrifically lacerated back of a Black man, remains a powerful contemporaneous record of the unimaginable cruelty suffered by Black Americans at the hands of white slave owners...

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Awards Season Catchup: "Devotion"

By Abe Friedtanzer

While Top Gun: Maverick has been enjoying a warm reception from audiences and awards bodies alike, another film about daring pilots is flying around in theaters. Based on the 2015 nonfiction book Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice by Adam Makos, Devotion is about a powerful friendship between two Navy pilots during the Korean War. One of them is Jonathan Majors, the only Black member of the unit. In the film's other Top Gun: Maverick connection, the other one is played by Glen Powell, who portrays Hangman in the present-day film. 

Devotion opens on Tom Hudner (Glen Powell) arriving to join Fighter Squadron 32, which already includes Jesse Brown (Majors), who faces routine racism from his fellow Navy officers and the neighbors who believe that his mere existence is stirring up trouble...

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Awards Season Catchup: ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Being an Oscar completist means tracking down every title that may or may not get nominated, including the contenders for Best Original Song. In addition to nominations from the Critics Choice Association and the Golden Globes, Taylor Swift’s “Carolina” is officially on the Oscar shortlist. It’s the end credits song in Where the Crawdads Sing, based on the 2018 novel by Della Owens, a period trial drama with plenty of flashbacks and North Carolina drawls…

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Awards Season Catchup: "Blonde" on Netflix

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s hard to wait to watch a film months after its release and not be at least somewhat affected by what the public thinks about it. To say that the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde has not received favorable mentions is an understatement. Still everyone has opinions so it seemed possible that there might be something worthwhile about it, like Ana de Armas’ Golden Globe-nominated performance or the Oscar-shortlisted makeup and hairstyling. Seeing the NC-17 rating and the daunting 2-hour-and-47-minute runtime at the start of the film sets up certain expectations, and, somehow, this film still manages to surprise, and not in a good way.

Blonde opens in black-and-white on a young Norma Jeane Mortensen (Lily Fisher) and her mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who shows Norma a photo of a celebrity she claims is her father. Gladys quickly descends into a manic state, driving her young daughter straight towards a fire while everyone else is running the other way...

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Review: Hanks Makes 'A Man Called Otto' Watchable

By Christopher James

The practice of remaking international films for an English language audience is a lazy process. Though we sometimes get a stray hit like Scorsese’s The Departed, too often we see a film’s teeth and charm whittled down to nothing (see Oldboy, Downhill, Ghost in the Shell to name a few). A Man Called Otto isn't an abject artistic failure like some of those, but it doesn't bring anything new to its Swedish counterpart, A Man Called Ove. It doesn't feel quite like a Google translate job (most of the American-ized changes work), but definitely only exists because it feels US audiences are unlikely to seek out the Swedish original.

You may think you’ve seen a curmudgeon before, but you haven’t met Otto (Tom Hanks). Every morning he makes his rounds, which includes cleaning up his small neighborhood development, closing the gate on his street and sneering at every smiling “idiot” he comes into contact with...

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