7500, the code used for hijackings, takes the all-too-familiar tropes of a terrorist hijacking and reframes them with a harrowing story that unfolds in real time. By removing any hint of sensationalism from the events, filmmaker Patrick Vollrath focuses on the moment-to-moment uncertainty of people ripped in an instant from the security of their familiar… Read More »
CRYPTOPIA: BITCOIN, BLOCKCHAINS AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
A lively, cinematic page-turner of a documentary, CRYPTOPIA: BITCOIN, BLOCKCHAINS AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET, takes us on a rollicking journey through the history of Bitcoin: its detractors, its disciples, and its philosophers.
DEERSKIN (Le Daim)
When we first meet Georges (Jean Dujardin), he has already begun his journey of transformation driving through the remoter edges of alpine France. We can sense from the way he fidgets that all is not right with the hero of DEERSKIN. And when he stops at a roadside gas station to flush his jacket down… Read More »
LAST CALL
LAST CALL uses what at first seems like a gimmick, two people on a split screen filmed at separate locations in one take in real time, to tell a quietly wrenching precis on loneliness and the need to connect in the 21st-century where access is immediate via phone or internet, but real connection is rare.… Read More »
PLUS ONE
Ben (Jack Quaid) and Alice (Maya Erskine) have reached that awkward age. Nearing thirty and still single, their lives have become a mad whirl of watching their friends and family pair up for the long haul with wedding vows, corny toasts, and too much champagne. Unable to further bear the stigma of being seated at… Read More »
MAZE
There is a distinct strain of melancholy nihilism throughout Stephen Burke’s MAZE. Based on the 1983 prison break by 38 inmates of the eponymous maximum security prison in Norther Ireland, it mixes the suspense of plotting an escape dependant upon split-second timing from an inescapable prison with the psychological games the prisoners play with the… Read More »
THE INVENTOR: OUT FOR BLOOD IN SILICON VALLEY
Alex Gibney makes a subtle, but salient, point in THE INVENTOR: OUT FOR BLOOD IN SILICON VALLEY. While recounting the curious story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, the billion-dollar company she founded, he draws the obvious comparison between Holmes and her idol, Thomas Edison, but he doesn’t stop there. Using the tropes of a suspense… Read More »
PATRICK
PATRICK, the film and the eponymous pug who plays him, are sly charmers who take a fairly predictable plot and make it a cozy experience well worth the investment of your time. You don’t need to be a fan of pugs to fall in love with Patrick, an irresistibly headstrong dog with an agenda not… Read More »
1945
The Oscars™ are not always the most reliable barometer of cinematic greatness. Let us remember the year that KRAMER VS. KRAMER beat out APOCALYPSE NOW. This year’s oversights were less egregious, and I am delighted that A FANTASTIC WOMAN won the Best Foreign Language prize. I am still miffed, though, that 1945 wasn’t even nominated… Read More »
ACTORS OF SOUND
One of my favorite cinema stories is about KING KONG and the trouble it ran into with the censors even in that pre-Code time of 1933. It wasn’t Fay Wray in her slinky satin negligee, it wasn’t dinosaurs tearing each other apart. No, the only censored bit of KING KONG was the sound of Kong… Read More »
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