Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain is ostensibly a retelling of an actual conflict during the twentieth century Chinese Civil War where a band of 30 Communist soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) successfully infiltrated and defeated a…
Movie Review: Despicable Me 3
I never thought I’d complain about a Despicable Me movie having too much plot. Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda’s latest entry in Universal Pictures’ unexpected franchise juggernaut feels less like a single movie than a jumble of half a dozen…
Movie Review: Moscow Never Sleeps
Johnny O’Reilly’s Moscow Never Sleeps aspires to more than just being an ensemble drama. It seeks to encapsulate the very spirit of that great Russian city, all its wonder, all its corruption, all its desperation, all its beauty. This may seem…
Movie Review: Camera Obscura
Before you ask, yes, Aaron B. Koontz’s Camera Obscura has distinct similarities to the forty-sixth episode of The Twilight Zone, “A Most Unusual Camera.” Both follow characters who stumble upon mysterious cameras whose photos predict the future. In the Twilight…
Movie Review: Future ’38
I’ve seen a number of movies I felt would’ve worked better as short films instead of as feature length ones. Usually it’s because there’s too little story, too little creativity, or too few original ideas to sustain 90+ minutes. But…
Movie Review: Letters from Baghdad
Despite claims of progressiveness and equality, the fields of twentieth century science, art, and history are bulging with pioneering women who, for one reason or another, have been been shuffled aside in favor of their male colleagues. Rosalind Franklin, Gertrude…
Movie Review: The Women’s Balcony
The subject of faith has always been tightly intertwined with Israeli cinema, and in recent years some of the most thought-provoking films on the subject have originated there. For a nation torn between secular modernization and maintaining an ancient ethnoreligious…
