The impressionistic and poetic style of the second half of If Beale Street Could Talk is undermined by a trite and sentimental first act. A man is wrongfully convicted of a crime, his girlfriend figures out she's pregnant while he is in jail, and then her caricature of an overbearing and religious mother-in-law gets upset in a sequence with such unconvincing performances that they were impossible to take seriously.
The film is at its best when it leans into a…
Where is the Friend's House might be the finest coming of age film I've seen. It does what so many other films in the genre like Kes, The 400 Blows, and The Spirit of the Beehive do by showing us the world through the eyes of a child. We feel sympathy for the injustice that's done to them and indignation for the ways their innocence and sincerity gets trampled under the feet of the adults in their life. Kiarostami executes…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
My previous experiences with body horror - The Thing and Videodrome - have been underwhelming because it was so hard to believe the gore. It was too hard to suspend disbelief. The Substance was the opposite. The gore aspects were stomach-churning, from the first use of the substance, to the constant needles and wounds, to great-great-great-grandma Elizabeth (shockingly ambulatory for her age, by the way), to the final monster. Even apart from the gore, The Substance is a visceral experience. It…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
The following is less a review and more an attempt to organize my thoughts on this.
How are you meant to review of a movie like House? To say its imagery is abstruse is an understatement. Obayashi is anarchic with his direction; it seems like one of his goals was to break every conventional rule of film making. So what does it all mean?
First, what’s the plot? A group of high school girls are preparing for summer break. One…
