All ten episodes of “The Great” season 2 were screened for this review. Huzzah! Hulu’s The Great is back for its second season of vicious quips, gorgeous costumes, and deliberately inaccurate history. (The series’ title card is quick to remind you that…
All the Bright Places Review: Elle Fanning impresses in new Netflix adaptation
After the incredibly bewitching Hearts Beat Loud, Brett Haley returns with a story that is at turns tender, but also very aware of its subject matter. Amidst the pain of our past, we can find solace in things. We imbue…
‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ Review: A Stylish, Frantic, and Morally Absurd Sequel
Disney’s grand experiment of continuously remaking its animated properties has reached a critical mass in more ways than one. While massive nostalgia plays like The Lion King and Aladdin have recently reaped massive returns at the box office, a boiling…
Teen Spirit Movie Review: Elle Fanning gleams in Max Minghella’s electrifying feature debut
In a word, Max Minghella’s directorial debut Teen Spirit is dualized: at once unfussy and familiar, inventive and invigorating. Wholly enlivening. There is a palpable confidence to the musical drama that spins Cinderella’s story to a fuschia-flooded stage, shines her…
Mary Shelley Movie Review: An emotionally tumultuous look at an artist’s inner demons
There’s no worth in trying to deny that Mary Shelley is an utterly familiar biopic. Much more though in the vein of a Victorian era literary adaptation (think Far From the Madding Crowd) than something as strategic and cold as The Imitation Game, the…
Movie Review: The Vanishing of Sidney Hall is a tonal disaster
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of The Vanishing of Sidney Hall is that nobody told writer/director Shawn Christensen that his gag-on-impact green smoothie of dated arthouse tropes was, in fact, a comedy. The saga a pretty boy ink-jock who becomes internally…
Sundance 2018 Review: I Think We’re Alone Now
I Think We’re Alone Now is a beautiful film. It hits all the apocalypse tropes, but it’s more concerned about the people who are left than why everyone else is gone. Director Reed Morano and writer Matt Makowsky’s character study of…