O.G. Doesn't Shy Away From Confronting Weighty Material And Is All The Better For It

Director Madeleine Sackler has not shied away from tackling heady material in her works as a documentary director and that commitment to confronting pressing issues in modern society continues with O.G., her first foray into conventional narrative filmmaking. This time around, the weighty issue she's exploring revolves around the personal experiences of a man serving the last few weeks of a prolonged prison sentence for killing another human being. Certainly, this is not meant to be fluffy feel-good entertainment that would be found in an Illumination movie, but in its best moments, O.G. (which is now streaming on the HBO GO app) explores challenging material in a truly thought-provoking manner.

Hold the Dark Is A Shallow And Tedious Journey Into The Cold Wilderness

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD 

I kept waiting and waiting for Hold the Dark to suddenly click into place for me, but that moment never came. Writer Macon Blair and director Jeremy Saulnier (the latter being the director behind one of 2016's best movies, Green Room) have delivered a feature that only gets more and more inert as it goes on as one gradually realizes that the slow-burn restrained atmosphere of the whole movie isn't going nowhere. Oh to go back to the start of the movie, when I still had hopes for this one realizing its potential. The beginning of Hold the Dark is easily the strongest part of the whole feature, as we're introduced to Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), an author who is contacted by Alaska resident Medora (Riley Keough) to help her find her son who was recently taken by wolves.