It's Remarkable That For Sama Exists But Thank Goodness It Does

You know how sometimes you see movies execute some wondrous feat with practical visual effects and you ponder "Wow, how did they pull that off?" That same sense of awe in pondering how a cinematic feat was accomplished defines For Sama, a documentary hailing from directors Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts comprised of footage I honestly can't believe was captured on film. This feature is all about the experiences of living in the middle of a wartime scenario in real-time as captured by Waad Al-Kateab's camcorder. At times, bombs go off around Al-Kateab, yet the footage keeps rolling. She knows the urgency of what she's recording. She knows that to create art about oppressed people is to create permanent reminders that they existed.

The Burial of Kojo Finds Humanity In Stylized Dreams

Much like Sean Baker's The Florida Project, The Burial of Kojo is a story about the struggles of adulthood told through the perspective of a child. In the case of this Blitz Bazawule directorial effort, the story is told as a quasi-fairy tale through the eyes of Esi (Cynthia Dankwa), who recounts a story about her Father, Kojo (Joseph Otsiman), who brought Esi and her Mother out to an isolated part of Ghana after a personal tragedy. Kojo and his family are lured back to city living by Kojo's brother, the person who was hurt most by Kojo's actions from so long ago. The past begins to catch up to the present for Kojo and her family and nothing good can emerge when these two elements collide.

The Mustang Takes Its Horse To Self-Improvement Road And Rides Until It Can't No More

When we start The Mustang, Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a prisoner who has thrown himself into the shackles of isolated solitude. He doesn't talk to anyone, not even his daughter on the rare times she comes to visit him, and he's basically accepted, in his own way, the idea that the rest of his life is doomed to this miserable solitary existence. While off on a chore consisting of shoveling horse fecal matter, Roman Coleman comes across a wily mustang horse that's apparently impossible to train. Stumbling upon this horse leads Roman to discover a group at this prison consisting of prisoners, under the watchful eye of Myles (Bruce Dern), learning how to train horses as a form of personal rehabilitation.

Climax's Barrage of Chaos Eventually Becomes Pretty Tiresome

Gaspar Noe is a French filmmaker known for pushing the boundaries in his filmmaking and pushing the buttons of people who watch his films. It was amusing to see other people more versed in his filmography than me refer to Climax as easily his most accessible film considering just what a demented concoction Climax is. It was amusing to think of how this played at my local Cinemark for about a week, a movie theater whose crowd tends to prefer Pure Flix movies over A24 movies. I'd imagine there were walk-outs a-plenty, heck, Climax is so disturbing that employees at the theater likely had a bet to see if anyone would stick around for an entire screening!

Chiwetel Ejiofor Makes A Promising Foray Into Directing With The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

It's easy to see a cookie-cutter version of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a feature-film adaptation of the true story of William Kamkwamba. It'd be a film told from the perspective of a white American named Bill Johnson (played by Jai Courtney, in his big Oscar glory turn), who comes to the African village of Wimbe thinking black people are inferior. But when he befriends a young inventor named William Kamkwamba who has an unlikely but bold plan to help save his village, well, o'l Bill Johnson is about to learn a heartwarming lesson that people of color are actually human beings. It'd be a cringe-inducing exercise that would nonetheless earn loads of money and the Academy Awards would line up all the Oscars for it all while actually ignoring movies made and about people of color.

Despite Lots of Potential and A Great Cast, Captive State Is An Underwhelming Attempt At Sci-Fi Social Commentary

At one point in time, Captive State was one of my most anticipated movies of Summer 2018! Yes, in a dark era before I knew what Monster Factory or Lil' Nas X was, Captive State was slated for an August 17, 2018 theatrical release and I was eagerly awaiting this new directorial effort from Rupert Wyatt given how much I adored his 2011 feature Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But then Focus Features delayed the title for March 2019 where it came and went so quickly at the domestic box office that I never got a chance to see it in theaters. Finally seeing it now, alas, Captive State turns out to be a movie so messy that it would have been a dissapointment even if I had never heard of it before prior to watching it.

Julianne Moore Shines In The Delightfully Low-Key Gloria Bell

Though she has an upbeat attitude, Gloria Bell (Julianne Moore), the titular lead character of Gloria Bell, is not a person whose life is devoid of turmoil. Both her life and the movie she stars in have darkness hiding in the margins, whether it's the deeply troubled upstairs neighbor that keeps Gloria up at night, her struggles to keep herself fully immersed in the lives of her now grown-up kids or all kinds of angst at her job. But Gloria still keeps on facing each new day with a touch of optimism and a car radio blaring upbeat disco-era tunes and both of those attributes help her out immensely. After all, there are plenty of things to be cheerful about, like a new man, Arnold (John Turturro), Gloria has started seeing.

The Highwaymen Is One of The Most Tedious Movies I've Seen In A Good Long While

The other day, I was going through the twenty-two 2019 movies I'd seen up to that point and trying to rank them all from best to worst (for the record, the best so far was Us). While going through this list, I discovered something I hadn't realized before: The Highwaymen is my least favorite movie of 2019 so far. Considering we've only just now reached April 2019, that statement doesn't really have much weight to it, goodness knows that The Highwaymen isn't anywhere near as bad as all-time worst films like God's Not Dead. But of the small crop of movies I've seen from 2019, The Highwaymen is easily the most disposable and tedious film of the bunch.

The Beach Bum Is Oddly Hokey For A Matthew McConaughey Stoner Comedy

Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), the titular lead character of The Beach Bum, used to be quite the poet. He still does pen down his thoughts in the form of poetry from time to time, but mostly he spends the present just engaging in loose sex, drinking a whole lot and injecting whatever drugs he can get his hands on. Moondog is basically just living the dream down in Miami, especially since he's got a wealthy loving wife, Minnie (Isla Fisher), who can help foot the bill and make sure the easy-going duo don't have a care in the world. A life of excess and no worries get ground to a halt when a personal tragedy sends Moondog down to rock bottom and staring down the possibility of rehab. Is Moondog gonna have to change his ways or will he continue to live his life in his own laidback way?

Apollo 11 Shows That Flying To The Moon Isn't As Easy As Frank Sinatra Made It Sound

"How did they do that?" is one of the best thoughts one can have while watching a movie. When a film so dumbfounds the senses that you're left agape at how they could have possibly achieved a certain image or explored a certain theme to such a thoughtful level, it's just a rush of an experience as a viewer. Apollo 11, a new documentary about the very first manned mission to the Moon, is one such film that got me repeatedly thinking "How did they do that?", particularly in terms of me being befuddled on how people were able to capture certain moments in this historic voyage on camera. I'm still in the dark on how certain shots were achieved but I am far more certain that such shots help make Apollo 11 a worthy cinematic ode to a great achievement in the history of mankind.

Tim Burton's Take On Dumbo Results In A Perfunctory Pachyderm

In the newest entry in the recent line of live-action remakes of classic animated Disney movies, we have Tim Burton directing a new take on Dumbo. This story now focuses on Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), who has returned from World War I without his left arm and having missed the passing of his wife. Now having to take care of his two kids, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), on his own, he returns to the circus he worked at as a performer before the war only to have ringmaster Max Medici (Danny DeVito) assign him the new duty of taking care of the elephants. It is in this job that Holt and his offspring encounter the newly born elephant Dumbo, a critter with abnormally large ears who is turned into a sideshow attraction and separated from his mama in short order.

Us Only Gets More Terrifying The More One Thinks On It

It's time for the Wilson family to get a little beach vacation in Santa Cruz. The four members of this family, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o), Gabe (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), who serve as the protagonists of Us, are simply looking for a little bit of R&R in their beach house even as Adelaide grapples with this unyielding feeling of despair that Santa Cruz brings out in her. But everything changes when a seemingly ordinary evening is interrupted by the arrival of four strangers in their driveway. It isn't long before it's revealed that these strangers are actually far more familiar than expected, they're doppelgangers of the four family members known as The Tethered. Led by a version of Adelaide known as Red (also played by Lupita Nyong'o), these doubles are set on one thing and one thing only: killing the Wilsons.

Hotel Mumbai Has A Grim Tone & Tons of Gunfire But Little Else To Its Name

In late November 2008, the Indian city of Mumbai found itself under attack by armed gunmen who proceeded to go into random places like gas stations and train stations and just shoot whatever poor souls were inside. There was a terrifying element of randomness to their already horrifying actions, nobody was safe from their rampage. These gunmen eventually found their way to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a lavish location where both guests and staff now found themselves under attack. The movie Hotel Mumbai follows a number of individuals, including employee Arjun (Dav Patel) and newly minted father David (Armie Hammer), as they try to survive all the bloodshed occuring in the middle of this real-life tragedy.

Vincent D'Onofrio's Directorial Debut The Kid Is A Forgettable Trip To The West

Back in the early 1990s, Unforgiven was like a shot heard 'round the world for Westerns as it provided a more contemplative take on the once-omnipresent genre that saw Clint Eastwood do a realistic deconstruction of his fabled Man With No Name persona. Since then, most Westerns have used Unforgiven as a creative touchstone, especially in terms of being more conscious of the gruesome violence that transpired in the Old West compared to many classic Westerns. Such widespread imitations of Unforgiven have meant that the elements of Unforgiven that were once trailblazing are now themselves old hat. By contrast, the best recent Westerns have been films like Rango, True Grit and Slow West that have established their own unique identities rather than do their own variation on the somber contemplative mood of Unforgiven for the umpteenth time.

Triple Frontier, Thankfully, Evokes Treasure of the Sierra Madre More Than Lone Survivor

MILD SPOILERS WITHIN

According to Santiago Garcia (Oscar Isaac), it's time to get the band back together. By band, I'm referring to Garcia and his group of former soldier buddies which used to consist of Captain Tom Davis (Ben Affleck), Captain William Miller (Charlie Hunnam), Ben Miller (Garrett Hedlund) and Francisco Morales (Pedro Pascal). All five of these men, in addition to being the lead characters of the new Netflix motion picture Triple Frontier, served the U.S. during extensive tours of military duty that saw them all taking all kinds of injuries but now, with all of that in the past, all of them (sans Garcia, who's working in Brazil trying to track down a drug lord) have returned to conventional civilian lives full of woes ranging from financial issues to run-in's with the law.

Captain Marvel Has A Great Mixture of Cosmic Weirdness And Character-Driven Poignancy

Remember how twelve years ago Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer turned Galactus into a gigantic cloud because the prospect of doing a comic book accurate version of the gigantic space God in a purple hat was apparently too goofy for a live-action movie? Well, welcome to March 2019, where the modern cinema scene is so immersed in oddball comic book cosmic details that Captain Marvel can open, with no introductory text crawl or some expository voice-over narration, with its titular lead superhero living a day-to-day life on the alien planet Hala under the names Vers while Academy Award nominee Jude Law portrays her mentor who talks about the "Kree Supreme Intellegence" and warns his pupil about the dangers of shape-shifting Skrull aliens.