The Angry Birds Movie 2 Could Stand To Channel The Spirit of Flapjack More

Why would I have any interest in watching a sequel to the overall terrible (and surprisingly racist) Angry Birds Movie? Three words: Thurop Van Orman. He's the filmmaker tasked with directing Angry Birds Movie 2, but previously, he was the creator of the Cartoon Network TV show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Flapjack was such an oddball program and I adored it for that. The gags on that show were usually as disturbing as they were comedic, which isn't a statement one can normally say for kid-oriented programming in the 21st-century. The prospect of him getting to direct a feature-length movie, even one starring those Angry Birds, was an exciting prospect for me!

The Nightingale Echoes Au Hasard Balthazar In Being Well-Done Harrowing Cinema

CW: Discussions of Sexual Assault ahead

The first word that pops into my mind when thinking about The Nightingale is "uncompromising". Jennifer Kent's new film, her follow-up to her horror movie sensation The Babadook, is the farthest thing one could imagine from a cookie-cutter major studio production with its bleak examination of how English settlers dehumanized members of marginalized populations, like women and Aboriginal Australians. It's something that evokes Au Hasard Balthazar in numerous moments in its unflinching darkness. Kent's filmmaking is wall-to-wall misery but it isn't just empty gruesomeness. This is an extremely appropriate tone, especially in the way she executes it, for the bleak story she's seeking to tell here.

A Major Misfire of a John Travolta Performance Anchors the Dismal The Fanatic

People on the Autism spectrum like myself have to deal with a lot of...let's say troublesome depictions of people in our community in pop culture. Typically, people on the Autism spectrum are reduced to being childlike savant sidekicks in American film/television that exist to deliver quips rather than actually function as people. To boot, such depictions are almost exclusively based on cis-het white dudes, furthering the incorrect perception that people of color and women cannot have Autism. There have been some exceptions to this rule, thankfully, but The Fanatic is not one of them, which features a person on the Autism spectrum as the titular lead whose fixation on a celebrity eventually turns violent.

Love, Antosha Is A Poignant Reminder of the Finite Nature of Life

We all get a finite amount of time on this Earth. It's not something we like to think about (I'm very much including myself in that "we"), but it's the truth. Realizing that, one begins to wonder how we'll use whatever amount of days on this Earth. Will we hold grudges? Will we look out for ourselves? What careers will we dedicate ourselves to? The mind reels at all the questions pouring out from contemplating our own mortality, perhaps that's why we prefer to push the idea that we have a limited amount of life to live to the back of our minds. But there's no getting around such an idea while watching the documentary Love, Antosha, which chronicles the life of the late great actor Anton Yelchin.

American Factory is a Gripping Look at Workers Fighting to Reaffirm Their Humanity

In the wake of 2008 economic recession, it was the little people at the bottom of the economic totem pole that suffered the most compared to the wealthy Wall Street tycoons who actually played a part in causing this downturn in the first place. Part of this suffering came from the closure of countless manufacturing plants, leaving American workers who had previously relied on that source of income with nowhere else to go. Some hope was offered up come 2015 when Chinese manufacturing company Fuyao bought up an abandoned GM manufacturing plant in Dayton, Ohio and turned it into an American branch of Fuyao's manufacturing company. For the first time in years, manufacturing jobs were brought back to this small American town and things were looking up.

Good Boys Is A Good Raunchy Comedy

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) are the best of friends. This trio of sixth-graders, the self-proclaimed Beanbag Boys, do everything together and that includes a super-important party where Max will have a chance to kiss his crush. Problem is, he and his two buddies have no idea how to kiss. Their attempts to learn how to kiss soon involve using a drone that Max's Dad owns to spy on Max's neighbor. From there, a whole series of predicaments unfold for these best buddies involving drugs, crossing a Highway and serious injuries that put them way out of their depth.

Brittany Runs a Marathon Stumbles Visually But Soars Thematically

One of the most interesting parts about Brittany Runs a Marathon is how differently it approaches the topic of changing one's life and habits compared to typical American cinema. The default for depicting personal growth in mainstream filmmaking is typically to use a montage to flash through a character getting their stuff together and changing their life for the better. Now, I love a good montage, but that shouldn't be the only way we depict people tackling the daunting prospect of improving their lives. Brittany Runs a Marathon goes for a different, more realistic approach that emphasizes little steps taken each day add up to change over time, one of a number thoughtful unique traits that can be found in this comedy/drama.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is Riveting Television

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance may be the ideal form of bringing back a beloved property in a modern-day reboot/continuation. A Netflix TV show prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson/Frank Oz directorial effort The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance takes place thousands of years before the events of the original movie. This extensive amount of time in between the two stories allows the saga of Age of Resistance to really stand on its own. Though they take place on the same planet (Thra) and share some characters, Age of Resistance will work just fine for newcomers and is interested in telling a good story and pushing the boundaries of puppetry-based filmmaking rather than just relying exclusively on callbacks to the original Dark Crystal movie.

Luce Is Morally Complex And Fascinating Fare

The titular lead character of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is an ideal High School student. The adopted son of Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter Edgar (Tim Roth) is in every extracurricular you can think of, he's a great speaker, he gets along equally well with his fellow students as he does with his teachers. Well, most of his teachers at least. Luce doesn't really get along well with his English teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer). Up to this point, Luce's just been mildly annoyed with his teacher. But things take a turn for the worse when Wilson calls Amy into her classroom to inform her that her son has written an extremely disturbing and violent essay and has also been keeping illegal fireworks in his locker.

Ready or Not, Here Comes An Awesome Horror/Comedy

Horror/comedy is such a fun genre. Combining seemingly disparate elements like yuks and gruesome scares is one of those mixtures that just works against all odds. It's the cinematic domain that Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson cut their teeth on as directors and other noteworthy filmmakers like Edgar Wright and Wes Craven have excelled in. Want a great modern-day example of this genre? Look no further than Ready or Not, a directorial effort from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Put simply, this movie is a whole heck of a lot of fun to watch, the kind of film that leaves you laughing as often as it leaves you in intense suspense.

Blinded by the Light Hits A Decent Amount of High Notes

You ever have the urge to just leave this podunk town, grab your lover and chase your dreams? Javed Khan (played by Viveik Kalra and a fictional character representing real-world writer Sarfraz Manzoor) constantly feels like that. A Pakistani sixteen-year-old living in Luton, England with his sisters, his mom, Noor Khan (Meera Ganatra) and stern father Malik Khan (Kulvinder Ghir). His Dad just wants Javed to focus on his classes and pursue a "real job" but Javed harbors secret dreams of pursuing a career in writing. Feeling isolated from his family and rampant bigotry against Pakistani's in his town make him feel alone...but he finds salvation in the music of Bruce Springsteen, whose tunes resonate on a profoundly personal level with Javed.

The Peanut Butter Falcon Is A Pleasant And Charming Affair

Zak (Zach Gottsagen) is an adult man with Down Syndrome who has spent the last two years looking at the outside world from a distance. State authorities have kept Zak locked up in a nursing home with people considerably older than him and with no chance to go out there and pursue his dream of becoming a pro-wrestler. One night, he manages to break out of the nursing home and begins to make the trek to a wrestling camp run by his hero, The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). Along the way, he runs into Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), a man on the run from a pair of vicious redneck hooligans (one of which is played by John Hawkes). Tyler didn't plan to have company on his voyage to Florida but since the wrestling school is on his way, he and Zak team up for an impromptu road trip, with both the redneck hooligans and nursing home employee Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) hot on their trail. 

The Kitchen Makes A Mixed Bag of a Mobster Mayhem Movie

Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby O'Carroll (Tiffany Haddish) and Claire Walsh (Elisabeth Moss) have something very important in common beyond them all being the lead characters of the new mobster drama The Kitchen. They're all spouses of critical figures in the Hell's Kitchen mobster scene circa. 1979. All of their husbands have recently gone to prison and while the remaining mob figures have promised to take care of the trio financially, they're not getting anywhere near enough money to take care of their lives. That's when Kathy, Ruby and Claire decide to take it upon themselves to take control of their lives and run their own mob racket that begins to expand in power to such a profound degree that it upsets the previous mobster status quo in New York City.

One Child Nation Emphasizes the Human Cost of Blindly Following a National Policy

For people like myself who were only vaguely aware of China's One-Child Policy that was implemented in the country from 1979 to 2015, the new documentary One Child Nation will prove to be highly informative and fascinating experience. Directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, the feature follows Wang returning to her home country of China to uncover more answers regarding this policy. Now that she's a mother herself, the idea of living in a country where the Government controls how many kids you can and cannot have is one that unnerves her. At first interviewing her relatives and individuals tasked with implementing this policy, Wang and Zhang's documentary gradually uncovers a whole slew of deeper sinister conspiracies within this policy in a timely tale of the human cost of dangerous blinding loyalty to nationalism.

Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark Gets Its Frights Right

Children love a good scare. Kids literature has proved this countless time over the centuries, dating back to all those gruesome Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales. In the modern era, the likes of R.L. Stine and Neil Gaiman have delivered books that give youngsters chills they can't get enough of. The book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, penned by Alvin Schwartz, has proved to be such a popular example of kids horror literature that it's a shock it's never been adapted into a film before now. Such an adaptation has finally come to life from director Andre Overdal as well as from producer Guillermo Del Toro, who also penned the screenstory for this feature.

Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling Delivers A Delightful Return To O-Town

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Holy heck, Rocko's Modern Life is back! That beloved animated cartoon that aired on Nickelodeon in the 1990s has returned for a 45-minute special entitled Static Cling that, after being put on a shelf for multiple years, finally debuted on Netflix yesterday. Like many classic Nickelodeon projects, the original Rocko cartoon was widely praised for how it managed to resonate just as much with adults as it did with kids, the plights of Rocko and pals typically involved filtering mundane parts of circa. 1990s adulthood life, such as doing laundry, through a highly wacky cartoony visual sensibility. Such a balance is maintained for Static Cling under the direction of Cosmo Serguson and original show creator Joe Murray.

Hobbs & Shaw Hits the Accelerator When It Comes to Absurd Mayhem

Right now, I'm reading Film History: An Introduction (Third Edition) by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell for the first time and it's a fantastic read, it's been so much fun to discover new terminology related to the oldest eras of cinema and learn factoids related to the earliest days of the major movie studios. Plus, the writing style of Thompson and Bordwell is extremely adept at explaining new concepts or ideas (like dadaism, for example) to readers who might be unfamiliar with them. My only real grievance with the book is that it doesn't contain any chapters dedicated to Hobbs & Shaw, a Fast & Furious spin-off movie that might just represent the peak of cinema as an artform. The Lumiere Brothers would have wept succulent tears of joy if they could have lived to see this David Leitch directorial effort.