Slut in a Good Way Combines Raunchy Comedy With Thoughtful Commentary

Back in October 2019, Joker director Todd Phillips commented that he had left making comedic movies because the current political climate made it impossible to make comedies anymore, everybody was just too sensitive nowadays for good comedy to even exist. Which is true, after all. We haven't had any good provocative comedies in recent years. Except for Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You. Or Olivia Wilde's Booksmart. Or Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit.  Or Riley Stearns' The Art of Self-Defense. Or the subject of this review, Sophie Lorain's Slut in a Good Way There simply isn't a single provocative comedy being made today, let alone one made up to the gold standard of wit found in the comedic masterworks of Todd Phillips.

Amazing Grace Is A Streamlined But Powerful Music Documentary

Some films are ultra-tricky to describe, they're such intricately detailed creations that it can be difficult to figure out how to boil them down to a single paragraph. Other times, movies like Amazing Grace are relatively to explain, which isn't a reflection on its quality for better or for worse but rather a reflection on how it's rather to-the-point. Amazing Grace is a concert documentary capturing Aretha Franklin performing a variety of gospel tunes over the course of two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. While brief stories told during the event illuminate on how singing these songs in her father's church was a formative experience for Franklin, this is not a documentary about Franklin's past, it is about her present circa. 1972.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Is Messy But Wistfully Thoughtful

Sometimes, myths can become larger than the men they're about and the same is true of certain films, especially when they're films like The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. This Terry Gilliam directorial effort has been through hell and back in its trek to the big screen with numerous difficulties emerging preventing it from becoming a finished film. A version of this project even started filming at the turn of century with Johnny Depp in the lead role before the plug eventually got pulled. For so long, it seemed like this endeavor was doomed to be just a legend of filmmaking gone awry rather than an actual movie. However, in April 2019, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote finally got released to theaters! It's real! It's an actual thing you can watch!

Fast Color Is A Thoughtful New Take On Superhero Storytelling

MILD SPOILERS FOR FAST COLOR FOLLOW

Boy, I've been waiting to see Fast Color for quite a while now. Ever since it premiered at the South-by-Southwest Festival in March 2018, I've been eagerly awaiting the chance to see it. Alas, thanks to Lionsgate dumping this one in its tiny theatrical release, I’ve had to wait 18 whole months since its SXSW premiere to see it! Admittedly, this is the very definition of a First World Problem, but it's still been aggravating to have to wait so long to get a chance to see this movie solely because Lionsgate bungled its theatrical release so badly.  When it comes to movies as good as Fast Color, though, such a wait becomes immaterial, I'm just glad I finally got to see this Julia Hart directorial effort that managed to exceed my lofty expectations!

Claire Denis Creates A Quietly Terrifying Voyage Into Space With High Life

High Life opens with its lead character, Monte (Robert Pattinson), doing some repairs on the exterior of the spacecraft he and his daughter are traveling in. During this process, he accidentally loses grip of a tool that proceeds to float off into the void of space. As both he and the viewer watch this tool escape his grasp, High Life's way of depicting the vastness of space is made clear. In this film, the terrifying vastness of space is treated bluntly, only towards the end of the movie do more traditional grandiose depictions of the cosmos emerge. For much of its runtime, space is depicted as something simple: endless blackness that spells doom for all that enter it. It's a terrifying domain made all the eerier by the frank way Claire Denis films space, she frames High Life's characters against this empty void with no pomp, no circumstance.

Teen Spirit Is a Mechanically Made Musician Movie

Over in the Isle of Wrights, there lives a teenage girl named Violet Valenski (Elle Fanning), who carries dreams of being a singer while going to school and working shifts at a local tavern despite her mother, Marla (Agnieszka Grochowska), sternly disapproving of her music ambitions. A local singing competition called Teen Spirit (hey, that's the name of the show!) gives Violet the chance to chase her music dreams. Teaming up with a Croatian former opera singer by the name of Vlad (Zlatko Buric) as her mentor, Violet decides to go forth and pursue her dreams. Challenges lie in wait as she struggles to balance respecting the people who have already helped her and embracing the people who could help her career go even farther. Will she ever get the best of both worlds?

Her Smell Marvelously Delves Into the Lows and Humanity of a Rockstar

MILD SPOILER WARNING
We've seen plenty of movies about period era rockstars before, but I truly cannot recall one as intimate as Her Smell, the newest directorial effort from Alex Ross Perry. My first foray into his directorial works goes for small-scale character interactions where most films of this ilk opt for a conventional rags-to-riches story packed with cheeky references to famous songs. Split into five different periods of the life of 1990s singer Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) that are comprised primarily of conversations between characters (save for one that shifts the setting to Becky's home), this more personal approach to telling her story allow the viewer to truly gets to know what a whirlwind of chaos this performer is as well as understand the more vulnerable human side of Becky Something.

Under the Silver Lake Is The Poor Man's Inherent Vice

Under the Silver Lake is a movie all about hidden messages, but none of those messages are as hiden as the movie itself, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last May before a prospective June 2018 release. But then the film reviewed mixed marks at the festival and its distributor, A24, delayed it to December 7, 2018. That day came and went without a trace of Under the Silver Lake. What happened? Was Under the Silver Lake doomed to just sit on a shelf somewhere? Then the film got a brief (read: three day long) theatrical run in April 2019 before dropping unceremoniously on Amazon Streaming last week. It's been a long journey for Under the Silver Lake and for some, this highly unusual motion picture will have been more than worth the wait. For me, it turned out to be a movie that would have been underwhelming even if I had been waiting just five minutes for it to arrive.

Rafiki Is A Wondrously Crafted Romantic Tale In Every Way

Kena (Samantha Mugatsia), the lead character of Rafiki, is a teenager in Kenya who lives a seemingly normal life. She's working towards becoming a nurse in between helping her father, John Mwaura (Jimmy Gathu), who is running in a local election. His primary competitor, Peter Okemi, has a daughter named Ziki (Sheila Munyiva), that captures the attention of Kena and the two begin hanging out. It isn't long before they realize they share a romantic attraction to each other, which is an issue since homosexuality itself is outlawed in Kenya. But societal disapproval, as well as the disapproval of their rival parents, be damned, Kena and Ziki are in love and the two of them bring out the best in one another in the time they spend together.

Beyonce: Homecoming Is Both An Exhilarating And Insightful Documentary

If somebody's still puzzled as to why Beyonce Knowles-Carter has become such a phenomenon in the modern-day pop culture scene, Beyonce: Homecoming, a feature that captures Beyonce's 2018 Coachella performance, should provide a handy-dandy summation for why exactly she's risen to such a legendary status in the modern era. Just the crowd's reaction to watching her perform live alone should say why Beyonce has become a pop culture force to be reckoned with. Many of these audience members don't get their experiences properly represented frequently in music nor does music often tell them explicitly that they are amazing because of the traits that society ostracizes them for. Self-empowerment anthems are common in American pop music but Beyonce takes that format and skews it through the lens of black culture and especially through the lens of black women empowerment to create self-empowerment anthems that don't just resonate with people but are quite unlike anything else we've ever seen in music.

Wild Nights With Emily Asks If The Real Emily Dickinson Would Please Stand Up

SPOILERS  FOR WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY AHEAD

Last week, I did a double feature at my nearest arthouse theater that consisted of Little Woods and Wild Nights with Emily, the latter being a feature chronicling under-discussed parts of Emily Dickinson's life, including her romantic relationship with a woman named Susan. In between the two movies, I struck up a conversation with an employee of the theater who noted how there had been many instances of people walking out of Wild Nights with Emily because the overt presence of Lesbianism caught people off-guard (apparently, a similar problem plagued The Favourite at the same location months earlier). Apparently, people constantly tried to ask for their money back and complained that the movie was inaccurate because "[Lesbianism] didn't happen back then".

Little Woods Is An Impressively Harrowing Directorial Debut For Nia DaCosta

In North Dakota, Ollie (Tessa Thompson) is struggling to keep her life together. She's in the last few days of her probation, she's looking to get a new job in the town of Spokane after she got out of the drug dealing business and she's trying to help out her sister, Deb (Lily James), and her nephew whenever possible. That's a lot for cash-strapped Ollie to keep track of and now she's got the added issue of her house being foreclosed on. Needing to get at least three grand so that she can hold onto the house, Ollie reluctantly decides to get back into the business of selling medication to the local townsfolk again while Deb grapples with suddenly discovering that she's pregnant.

Someone Great Is A Charming Ode To Love Lost And The Friends We Made Along The Way

New Yorker Jenny Young (Gina Rodriguez), the lead character of Someone Great, just had the worst break-up. After nearly a decade of dating Nate Davis (Lakeith Stanfield), the two have split up after he refused to try a long-distance relationship with Jenny once she moves to Los Angeles for her new job at Rolling Stone. Emotionally distraught, it's time for Jenny's two best friends, Erin (DeWanda Wise) and Blair (Brittany Snow), to help their best friend get out of her post-breakup funk. How will they plan to do this? By going to a splashy concert, tickets to which are extremely hard to come by. Tracking down those tickets will take the trio on an adventure that will keep reminding Jenny of the relationship she just lost as well as the great friendships she still has.

If You've Been Holding Out For A Hero, Then Avengers: Endgame Delivers

Spoilers for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War follow but absolutely no spoilers for Avengers: Endgame are contained within this review.

On paper, Avengers: Endgame is a proposition that really should be laughable rather than something you can pull off. Continuing off the cliffhanger ending of Avengers: Infinity War, a fun movie that did have a bad habit of throwing away characterization at the expense of spectacle, that saw so many beloved superheroes perish after Thanos (Josh Brolin) used the Infinity Gauntlet to snap half of the universe out of existence, Avengers: Endgame decides to expand its scope even wider Infinity War's already expansive storytelling canvas. This should result in excess to the nth degree, but instead, Avengers: Endgame winds up as something extraordinary, a blockbuster movie that can touch your heart so profoundly and also make you giggle with giddy glee at what fun is transpiring on-screen. As someone who frequently enjoys these Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, this fan-service heavy entry is aimed squarely at me, and there's plenty of moments in the film that made the nerdy side of me break out into convulsions of joy for sure.

Native Son Updates A Classic Novel To The Modern Era With Solid Results

Native Son is an adaptation of a 1940 novel by Richard Wright, and like many seminal works of literature from the mid-20th century, Native Son has had its fair share of adaptations into other mediums of artistic expression. A stage play version of the story was performed only a year after the book was published while two feature films adaptations have been released in this past. This newest cinematic incarnation (which was an A24-financed production released on HBO) of Native Son arrives from screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks and director Rashid Johnson and brings the story from its original 1930's backdrop to the modern era of 2019.

Hellboy Is So Bad That It Doesn't Even Deserve A Fun Hell-Based Pun

Hellboy can now join esteemed company like Spider-Man and Batman in being one of the rare superheroes to headline both a great movie and a truly awful movie. While Hellboy II: The Golden Army rose to become one of the best superhero features back in 2008, the new 2019 Hellboy movie is rancid trash. It's a stunningly inept exercise that dumbfounds me in how they messed up a can't miss premise like this. A big red guy fighting fantasy monsters should be a can't-miss proposition for making an entertaining motion picture but much like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Batman v. Superman managed to utilize their own previously fun characters for garbage filmmaking, Hellboy finds so many ways to screw up its own basic premise and squander a top-notch cast in the process.

Sometimes Dead Is Better And Maybe That's The Place The Pet Sematary Series Should Have Been Left In

The Creed family (unfortunately, not the Creech family) needs a change of pace. Boston is just too busy, so they've decided to move to an isolated house in Ludlow, Maine. There, Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), Rachel Creed (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Ellie (Jete Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie & Lucas Lovie), plus their cat Church, can slow down and take some time to smell the roses. But the discovery of a local pet cemetery in the vast forest on their property puts the family on edge, as does the death of Church. If only there was some way to bring their cat back from the dead. If only neighbor Jud Crandell (John Lithgow) knew of some spot where dead things could be buried and then come back to life. If only that spot could bring Church back to life and start a series of tragic events for the family surrounding an inability to cope with death. Oh if only...

Missing Link Is Mostly Agreeable But It's Also A Step Down From Past LAIKA Films

Missing Link is a very traditional sort of family movie, a stark contrast to many animated American family movies that pride themselves on constant wink-winks and self-referential nods to the audience. That's not the angle Missing Link wants to go down, no siree, instead, it's a classical globe-trotting adventure story with flashes of a Western and an old-timey slapstick comedy (think Laurel & Hardy) thrown in for good measure. All of these old Hollywood influences result in writer/director Chris Butler making a movie that tries to stick to just the basics, but it does that job too well, resulting in a film that far too often registers as passably agreeable rather than exceptionally memorable.

Brie Larson's Directorial Debut Unicorn Store Is A Totally Unique Delight

Unicorn Store is all about Kit (Brie Larson), a young artist who is struggling with the whole conventional grown-up routine. Her relationship with her parents, Gladys (Joan Cusack) and Gene (Bradley Whitford), is a bit strained, her art is constantly looked down upon and she feels like she's not living up to what her peers have accomplished. Seeking to correct this, she receives a job making copies of old magazines at a standard advertising agency. It's the kind of normal grown-up job she's typically avoided, but Kit has decided now is the time to put away childish things. At least, that's what she thinks until she gets told by The Salesman (Samuel L. Jackson) that she has the chance to own her very own unicorn.

All of The Fun Found In Shazam! Comes From Total Creative Commitment

Considering that the modern conception of the superhero movie has been running since the 1998 release of Blade, you'd think this subgenre would be running on fumes by now. Perhaps it is to some, but from my vantage point, the superhero movie subgenre seems to be flourishing in recent years simply because producers, perhaps in an attempt to prevent the superhero movie from getting long in the tooth, seem to be willing to let filmmakers take both new and old characters into fresh new directions. Just look at what Taika Waititi did with the Thor mythos or the work done by the cast & crew of the first solo Black Panther movie or anything related to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.