Review: 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie' Knows How To Put On a Show

By: Christopher James

Sometimes saccharine is just sweet enough. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie piles it on thick, but what else are drag queens supposed to do when applying their makeup. Amazon Prime’s latest film acquisition is a charming delight. It’s packed with warmth, heart and plenty of sass. While it is very much a story rooted in the now, Jamie’s love of drag comes from understanding of the queens that came before him. In fact, what’s so interesting about the film is that the main antagonists aren’t his peers (though some are harsh), it’s from a generation above that hasn’t evolved with the times.

Simply put, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a crowd pleaser worthy of any crown...

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Review: Dev Patel captivates in the legend of "The Green Knight"

by Matt St Clair

the severed head of "The Green Knight"

Normally, Arthurian legends are sword-and-sorcery fables. The latest Arthurian tale The Green Knight, which is primarily about Arthur’s nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) keeps the sorcery, yet there’s little swordplay. Unless you count a terrifying axe that keeps waiting to be swung. The Green Knight may be less action-oriented than other such tales but it's a visually stunning, cerebral dissection of the Messiah complex and its ties to monarchy. 

Despite Gawain not being religiously devout, he’s still eager to become a knight at his uncle’s Round Table...

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Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair and Fests are Festing

by Jason Adams

I don't know about you but I've entirely lost all concept of time -- is it really time to start gearing up and delivering news about fall movie festivals? Wasn't it just Sundance a literal second ago? Next thing you'll tell me it's not 2020 anymore. Anyway while I was busy slowing sliding down the wall of my shower with a stunned vacant look on my face the New York Film Festival was announcing its Opening Night film for this year's 59th festival -- Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Lady Frances McDormand, will kick it off in the city that never sleeps on the night of September 24th. That's 64 days away! Here's their descriptor of the flick:

"A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish Play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition. In meticulously world-weary performances, a strikingly inward Denzel Washington is the man who would be king, and an effortlessly Machiavellian Frances McDormand is his Lady, a couple driven to political assassination—and deranged by guilt—after the cunning prognostications of a trio of “weird sisters” (a virtuoso physical inhabitation by Kathryn Hunter). Though it echoes the forbidding visual designs—and aspect ratios—of Laurence Olivier’s classic 1940s Shakespeare adaptations, as well as the bloody medieval madness of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Coen’s tale of sound and fury is entirely his own—and undoubtedly one for our moment, a frightening depiction of amoral political power-grabbing that, like its hero, ruthlessly barrels ahead into the inferno. An Apple/A24 release."

Other names of note in Joel's take on the Scottish slaughter-tale of yore include Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Ineson (so basso-profundo memorable at Thomasin's pops in The VVitch), and the always memorable Harry Melling. Meanwhile names not of note specifically include Ethan Coen, who didn't work with Joel on this one? I hope the Coens TM are okay. I have a lot invested in that brand loyalty. What do we think -- will this one get the Coen name back in the Oscar business or what? 

Sundance: "The Witch" is a Riveting One-Of-A-Kind Horror Experience

Michael C. here with one of the big discoveries of Sundance 2015.

There is something happening in the horror genre right now.  Maybe its a response to the dreadful depths to which mainstream horror titles sank in the past decade but like antibodies fighting off an infection the indie scene has churned out one great movie after another in recent years: The Babadook, The Guest, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Under the Skin (which is totally horror, if not only horror). Like an unstoppable slasher the genre will just not stay down. Already at this Sundance we have had the astonishing It Follows and now comes Robert Eggers' The Witch another peak for the horror genre. 

The Witch is a true blast of originality that immerses the viewer in 1630's New England as a family of puritans banished to live isolated on the edge of wilderness is beset by the occult terrors residing in the nearby woods. The result is more than simply jump-outta-your-seat scary (though it is often that) it is genuinely unnerving in a way few films can manage. The effect is like a cold hand slowly closing over your heart.

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