Friday, September 11, 2020 at 6:00PM by Eurocheese
I drove 100 miles (one way!) to see two movies last weekend. Was it worth it? Well… yes and no. Here’s my take on returning to theaters and my thoughts on the two films I went (way) out of my way to see: Tenet and The Personal History of David Copperfield.
First, the moviegoing experience itself...
Monday, September 7, 2020 at 11:41PM by Lynn Lee
Until a couple of weeks ago I had never seen any of the Bill & Ted movies, despite being a late Gen-Xer and longstanding fan of Keanu Reeves. Now, having watched all three in a row, I can confirm most triumphantly that if you enjoyed the first two, you will have a bodacious time watching the third. If you’re a Bill & Ted-curious newcomer, I recommend giving Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure a whirl first and seeing if you dig its vibe. If not, the latest installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music, probably won’t do anything for you.
For me, getting a crash course in Bill & Ted three decades after their debut was a pleasantly surreal experience. Not that they were total strangers to me; any adolescent with any exposure to pop culture in the ’90s had at least some familiarity with the amiably vacuous duo, their iconic SoCal-inflected catchphrases, and their penchant for spontaneous air guitar in response to anything that pleased them. But seeing them in their original context felt like jumping into their rickety phone booth and traveling back to a more innocent time – for both me and them...
Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 6:35PM 
by Juan Carlos
Jessica Swale’s Summerland introduces us to Alice, an old writer living in the countryside during the 1970s. We watch her drive away children who are playing petty pranks on her. While it may seem random, the film utilizes this moment to inform us of her instinctive response to children which will interfere with the story to unfold.
Cut to the 1940s: in the same town, people are wary of the looming terror of the war. A young Alice (Gemma Arterton), then a recluse, is given the news that she is required to take in a young boy named Frank from London as the perils of the war continue to escalate in the capital. Meanwhile, she remembers a former lover (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) from the past...
Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 11:30PM by Tony Ruggio
I’m not certain I’ve ever seen a movie fall apart so much, so quickly, and so late as The Tax Collector. What begins as an intense, well-crafted, gangster picture -- almost a twisted buddy movie really -- eventually devolves into a poorly constructed revenge film.
The first half, at least, is chock-full of intriguing little details, and workday nuances that could’ve only been culled from real-life experience on the mean streets of East Los Angeles. David (Bobby Soto) is a mid-level collector for his imprisoned ringleader father (Jimmy Smits) and connected uncle (George Lopez). He’s a monied, family man in a wealthy enclave, running the day-to-day errands for their neck of the woods, which mostly involve collecting gang taxes from the neighborhood shops and shopkeepers. His enforcer Creeper, a well-dressed white man and friend he clearly grew up with, is played by a riveting Shia Labeouf...
Monday, July 27, 2020 at 9:42PM Please welcome new contributor Juan Carlos Ojano, who you may know from the podcast "One Inch Barrier" - Editor
by Juan Carlos Ojano
Biopics are tricky. Inasmuch as making them are good bets for filmmakers to get awards consideration, they are also prone to falling to overused clichés. One overworn formula persistently plagues this genre: the all-encompassing chronicle of the major events in a real person’s life. Such is the case with Marjane Satrapi’s Radioactive, an unabashed ode to the legacy of Marie Curie and her contributions to science, that's now streaming on Amazon Prime.
While this biopic harbors a lot of distinct aesthetic choices, they are but distracting compensation for formulaic storytelling...
