New and unusual movie reviews and recommendations

It's 2022

4/15/2022

aWell, I haven't updated in a while. Things really picked up in 2021 and now it's already April.

Here's my Top 15 Movies for 2021 in no particular order:
French Exit (Azazel Jacobs)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
Never Gonna Snow Again (Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert)
The Hand Of God (Paolo Sorrentino)
The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg)
C’Mon C’Mon (Mike Mills)
Spencer (Pablo Larrain)
Dug Dug (Ritwik Pareek)
Nine Days (Edson Oda)
Pig (Michael Sarnoski)
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Limbo (Ben Sharrock)
Lapsis (Noah Hutton)
Through the Night (Loira Limbal)
The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright)

Special mentions:
Kimmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers)
Doctor (Nelson Dilipkumar)
Manadu (Venkat Prabhu)
Mass (Franz Kranz)
The Humans (Stephen Karam)
Ajagajantharam (Tinu Pappachan)
Blue Bayou (Justin Chon)
The Exchange (Dan Mazer)
Lune (Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Arturo Perez Torres)
Nobody (Iilya Naishuller)

This year I saw just over 500 films and nearly 200 short films. Of the features, 84 were directed by women (17%).

2020 Round Up

3/9/2021

2020 was an odd year for film.I was still watching 10+ films/week but many were older films that I was revisiting. I also lost my film list a few months ago and had to start over (reconstructing partly from memory). I still watched roughly 500 films this year but they weren't all new this time.
In terms of new films, in no particular order:

Top 15 for 2020
Nomadland (USA. dir. Chloe Zhao)
Showbiz Kidz (USA. dir. Alex Winter)
Kajillionaire (USA. dir. Miranda July)
Murmur (Canada. dir. Heather Young)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (USA. dir. Eliza Hittman)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (USA. George C Wolfe)
The Kid Detective (Canada. dir. Evan Morgan)
Sound of Metal (USA. dir. Darius Marder)
Black Conflux (Canada. dir. Nicole Dorsey)
Dead Dicks (Canada. dir. Lee Paula Springer and Chris Bavota)
Lucky Grandma (USA. dir. Sasie Sealy)
You Cannot Kill David Arquette (USA. dir. Price James and David Darg)
Antigone (Quebec. dir. Sophie Deraspe)
Corpus Cristi (Poland. dir. Jan Komasa)
Cocoon (Germany. dir. Leo nie Krippendorff)

Thunder Road

8/3/2019

Every once in a while something really astonishing and fresh comes along and Thunder Road is both astonishing and fresh. It blew my mind! Jim Cummings deserves every accolade and more for this wonderful little micro-budget indie film.
I'm a sucker for a good movie about mental illness. If you add in an element about parent/child bonds, family, or parenting alone then you've got me and I'll watch that movie.
Thunder Road tackles loss, addiction, mental illness, masculinity, family bonds, and the stress of being a single-working parent, and yet somehow is a hilarious comedy. And it does all this without ever laughing at Officer Jim's mental breakdown. This film is filled with earnest love and pain and it balances all the feels and tackles tricky issues effortlessly. This is not a cringe comedy, it's all heart and soul.
5/5 MUST SEE!

To Dust

8/3/2019

After his wife passes away, a Hasidic cantor enlists the aide of a community college biology teacher when he becomes obsessed with determining how long it will take her body to return to the earth.
This movie is a very understated comedy. It's surprsingly clever and funny. It's wonderful to see Son of Saul's Geza Rohrig in something wacky and fresh. Matthew Broderick is absolutely hysterical. This is one zany buddy comedy!
5/5

2019, so far....

8/3/2019

I'm 300+ films into 2019. Here are some of my favorites, in absolutely no particular order..except the Thunder Road is #1..:
Thunder Road (US)
To Dust (US)
Mouthpiece (Canada)
The Dig (Ireland)
Gully Boy (India)
Kumbalangi Nights (India)
Falls Around Her (Canada)
Relaxer (US)
The Beach Bum (US)
Sir (US)
Wild Rose (US)
Monos (US)
High Life (France/UK)
Dark Lies the Island (Ireland)
Rafiki (Kenya)
Ask Dr Ruth (US)
10 Days Before the Wedding (Yemen)
Fall of the American Empire (Canada)
The Souvenir (UK)
Diamentino (Portugal)
Toy Story 4 (US)
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache (US)
A Colony/Une Colonie (Canada)
What the Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Canada)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (US)
The Farewell (US)
Booksmart (US)

Best of 2018

12/31/2018

Here, in no particular order, are my

Top 15 Best Films of 2018
Luk' luk'I (Wayne Wapeemukwa, Canada)
Ex'Libris: NYPL (Fredrick Wiseman, USA)
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan)
Dogman (Matteo Garrone, Italy)
Unsane (Soderbergh, USA)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, USA)
Beyond the Clouds (Majid Majid, India)
Science Fair (Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, USA)
Champion (Kim Yong-wan, South Korea)
We the Animals (Justin Torres, USA)
Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, USA)
Blaze (Ethan Hawke, USA)
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, USA)
American Animals (Bart Layton, USA)

special mentions for:
First Reformed (2017)
Foxtrot (2017)
Loveless (2017)
The Favourite
Sorry to Bother You
Won't You Be My Neighbour?
Burning
Borders
A Star is Born
Roma
RBG
Black Panther
Meditation Park
Never Steady, Never Still
Doob: No Bed of Roses
Blackkklansman
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Puzzle
Prospect
Tully
How Viktor ‘The Garlic’ took Alexy ‘The Stud’ to the Nursing Home
Beast
Fistful of Dirt
and, of course,
PADDINGTON 2!!!
(oh god! there are too many! it was a good year for cinema and i can't name them all)

Science Fair

12/22/2018

Science Fair is s pure joy. This is my favorite doc of 2018, and it was a GOOD year for docs!
Here we follow various high school students from around the world who hope to win "Best in Show" at an international high school-level science fair.
These kids are compelling and funny, and terrifyingly brilliant.
You really must see this one!
5/5

Meditation Park

12/22/2018

Meditation Park is Mina Shum's newest film. Here, she reunites with Double Happiness' Sandra Oh. (Double Happiness is also a great film!)
Meditation Park stars Cheng Pei-Pei as dutiful, shy, immigrant housewife/grandmother, Maria, who starts to come out of her shell and enjoy life when she suspects her husband is having an affair. Pei-Pei shines here in this comedic and compelling role. In fact, the entire case is so great!
Alannah Ong, Lilliam Lim, and Sharmain Yeoh play the hilarious group of ladies who befriend Maria and teach her how to sell illegal parking spots around their Vancouver neighbourhood. Don McKellar absolutely delights me every single time, so I was very happy to have him show up here in as Gabriel, a fragile neighbour who also befriends Maria. Veteran Hong Kong star Tzi Ma is great as Maria's stern husband, Bing, and Sandra Oh plays her daughter Ava.
This is a really lovely little film that is both funny and heartfelt.
5/5

Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library

12/17/2018

It's hard to convince people that they should check out a 197 minute (3hours 17mins) documentary about a library but you really should. You won't regret it.
Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library is one of Fredrick Wiseman's newest docs (2018). If you've never seen a Wiseman, do it. The 88 year old documentarian has 47 credits to his name, and shows no sign of stopping. His films focus on facets of American institutions such as health care, welfare, law and order, justice, education, government...
Ex-Libris focuses on the daily life and goings-on of NYPL--visiting branches in all five boroughs, showing various collections, events, meetings, classes and workshops, exhibits, as well as different departments such as reference, photography, children's collections, and so on. And, I will go to bat for even the segments that take place during policy-focused board meetings.
Here there are no interviews, no talking heads, no narration, just fly-on-the-wall observation focused on all aspects of NYPL.
This film is RIVETING.
5/5

Blaze

12/16/2018

I'm a huge fan of the late country singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. I could listen to him everyday, all day. A lot of people I know appreciate Townes, but they tell me he's too sad to listen to for very long...I disagree. Well, if you love Townes, or even just appreciate him, or if you are interested in country music, or specifically the Texas Outlaw Country scene of the 1970s and 80s, you will probably quite enjoy Blaze.
Blaze is a new film from actor/director Ethan Hawke. It's about the late country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley, a lesser known contemporary and close friend of Townes.
Not a heck of a lot is known about Blaze so the film only loosely considers itself a "sort-of" biopic. It's really just creates a feeling and gives an impression that is rich and authentic.
To achieve this, a good deal of the film is devoted to telling stories about Blaze, rarely allowing the audience in on Blaze's own perspective. The film dedicates itself to blatant myth building, using the spot-on incredible Charlie Sexton as Townes spinning yarns as Townes was well-known to do. It's explicit that we're being told about Blaze and Blaze is not speaking for himself. The film leaves large gaps instead of trying to fill in every aspect of Blaze's life, history, and experience. We tend to be always watching him while he's often making a spectacle of himself.
A word on the casting: Hawke did very well here, using real musicians who are not actors in two of the three lead roles. Musician Ben Dickey is absolutely astonishing in his first role, as Blaze. I heard him explain in an online interview that he for the role he learned Blaze's entire 60-ish song catalogue and indeed played live on set throughout the film--most notably in the sections devoted to the entire performance and recording of Live At The Austin Outhouse album, including all the banter.
Meanwhile, musician Charlie Sexton is incredible as Townes. It's uncanny; he nails Marie, and it is so exactly perfectly Townes. Alia Shawkat is terrific and rounds out and grounds the film as Sybil Rosen, Blaze's one known, longtime girlfriend whose memoir 'Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley' inspired a large portion of the film.
I highly recommend this raw, beautiful sort-of, kind-of biopic.
5/5