Mediocre Marks: Our Review of ‘Senior Year’

Movies, Netflix, What's Streaming? ‐ ‐ May 13, 2022
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Mediocre Marks: Our Review of ‘Senior Year’

One of the crazy things in Alex Hardcastle’s Senior Year is that one of the characters is dying of cancer yet she still has to perform her motherly duties. She has to assure her daughter, Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) that the latter is “beautiful and smart and funny”. These are qualities of a sympathetic enough for a protagonist. But she’s also veering into narcissism. This is what viewers expect for a girl who transforms herself from an awkward Australian immigrant to an American cheer captain. With her squad, she performs one of the routines she has to do in front …

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WIN A COPY OF ‘UNCHARTED’ ON BLU-RAY!!!!

Blu-Ray/DVD, Giveaways/Contests, Movies, Uncategorized ‐ ‐ May 12, 2022
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WIN A COPY OF ‘UNCHARTED’ ON BLU-RAY!!!!

Fortune always favours the bold…

Street-smart Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan and lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even …

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Predictable Yet Enjoyable Ghost Story: Our Review of ‘Monstrous’

Movies ‐ ‐ May 12, 2022
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Predictable Yet Enjoyable Ghost Story: Our Review of ‘Monstrous’

A good ghost story can be hard to not only hard to find, but classify as well. After all, ghost stories don’t necessarily have to be horror stories. Monstrous is one of those films that wants to be a horror story at times, but really isn’t all that scary. It’s more of a mystery than anything else. In some cases that can be alright. But in the case of Monstrous it feels like it loses its way instead of forging its own path.

Monstrous tells the story of Laura (Christina Ricci, The Matrix Resurrections) and her son Cody (Santino Barnard, Penny …

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Beauty In The Dirt: Our Review of ‘Clean’ on Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray/DVD, Movies ‐ ‐ May 10, 2022
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Beauty In The Dirt: Our Review of ‘Clean’ on Blu-Ray

Revenge is never meant to be tidy…

On Blu-Ray today, Clean manages to find some genuine beauty in the very dirty business of revenge thanks to an exceptional leading performance and style for days that elevates an ugly topic into something that we can’t look away from.

Tormented by a past life, garbage man Clean (Adrien Brody) attempts a life of quiet redemption. But when his good intentions mark him a target of local crime boss (Glenn Fleshler), Clean is forced to reconcile with the violence of his past.

Best way to describe Clean would be as a simple movie and a simple …

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A Bright Light In Darkness: Our Review of ‘Wuhan Wuhan’

Movies, VOD/iTunes/DigitalDownload ‐ ‐ May 09, 2022
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A Bright Light In Darkness: Our Review of ‘Wuhan Wuhan’

When COVID-19 started taking over the world many were looking for someone to blame, and inevitably their eyes landed on the city of Wuhan in China where the virus was first detected. To many it was their fault we were forced to be locked down, and their fault that people were dying. The people of Wuhan were being held accountable for something that was hitting them just as hard as the rest of the world. And ignorance and intolerance caused a lot of hatred to be flung in the direction of the Asian people. Part of the reason behind their …

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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Alis’

Hot Docs 2022 ‐ ‐ May 08, 2022
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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Alis’

Documentaries, like most genres that evince some semblance of realism, show us the homes and lives of people who are less fortunate than most viewers. Alis shows, specifically, a glimpse into the lives of Colombians, most of them girls, some of them in the 2LGBT+ community, who live in a group home. This does something different though, in that while interviewing these residents, they ask them to imagine a new resident bearing the same name as this documentary. The directors took five years to make this documentary, which is enough time to build trust with the residents, which shows.

Alis mixes …

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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Hunting in Packs’

Festival Coverage, Hot Docs 2022 ‐ ‐ May 08, 2022
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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Hunting in Packs’

Director Chloe Sosa-Sims sets out with Hunting in Packs to show a microcosm of women in 3 different countries. They all toil away to affect change in the male-dominated political arena. We follow these women as elections in each country loom ahead, with the promise of sweeping change. Sometimes controversial Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner tells her side of the story as the 2019 federal elections draw close. British MP Jess Phillips struggles to affect change in domestic abuse legislation as her country elects Boris Johnson is and drives the country straight into Brexit. And Pramila Jayapal spearheads the Medicare For …

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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Silent Beauty’

Hot Docs 2022 ‐ ‐ May 08, 2022
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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Silent Beauty’

There are scenes in Silent Beauty that do feel homey and safe, when a woman, the documentary’s director, Jasmin Mara López, talks to her mother, their bodies close as they sit together on the couch. The mother talks about a hope that whatever they went through is making them stronger. And they’ll need that strength. Lopez is one of the first people to disclose the sexual assault that she endured at the hands of her grandfather. As it turns out, he also performed sexual acts to other children in her family. Her disclosure turned her into an outcast in her family.

Clocking …

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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Rojek’

Hot Docs 2022, What's Streaming? ‐ ‐ May 08, 2022
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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Rojek’

The few people who have written about Zayne Akyol’s Rojek wrote about the juxtaposition between its interview scenes and what looks like coverage. That aforementioned criticism (positive) saw that juxtaposition as a display of consequence. Which yes, it’s a valid interpretation, there’s a lot of that in here. Another personal interpretation would be that, behind all the noise and the score, there’s a mournful tone underneath. One of the interviewees worked on oil and he could be one of the people in the next scene, transporting oil in trucks on Syria’s highways. Helping rebuild that country after its civil war. …

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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind’

Hot Docs 2022 ‐ ‐ May 08, 2022
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Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind’

Stig Björkman has been bugging Joyce Carol Oates to let him make a documentary about her life. Not in a stalker-y way, obviously. She’s done her share of interviews, as the documentary shows. But after those few moments in the spotlight, she returns to the kind of private life that viewers expect a prolific writer to live. After sixteen years of reading Bjorkman’s pitches for a documentary spanning her career and life, she finally says yes. This documentary that gives her a longer spotlight, having a mouthful of a title like Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of …

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