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.

Shirkers Is A Fascinating Exploration of A Cinematic Passion Project That Never Was

I've mentioned before how Netflix really did just crush it in terms of the quality of their original movie output in the last three months of 2018 and easily rising towards the top of that stellar crop of movies (which really is quite the feat!) is the documentary Shirkers. Directed by Sandi Tan, the feature is named after a motion picture she made with her friends and a film teacher mentor, Georges Cardona, in Singapore in the early 1990s. She poured her heart and soul into this film, all of her passion for cinema drove her to complete something that hadn't really been seen before in the film industry of her home country of Singapore.

John Turturro, The Coen Brothers And Especially John Goodman Are All In Top-Notch Form In Barton Fink

One of the most realistic depictions I've ever seen of being a writer came from, of all places, a SpongeBob SquarePants episode entitled Procrastination depicting the shows titular lead character trying to get an essay about red lights done for his boating class. What constantly gets in his way is his own inability to concentrate, SpongeBob keeps on finding new reasons for him to delay doing his essay, whether it's doing stretches or cleaning his kitchen until it's all shiny and chrome. It's a brilliantly funny episode in and of itself (so many of those classic SpongeBob episodes are) but it especially resonates with me as an accurate depiction of how hard it can be to focus on actually getting writing done.

The Royal Tenenbaums Makes A Melancholy Interior With An Eccentric Exterior

As said in my review of Rushmore, there's a fascinating undercurrent of melancholy to the works of Wes Anderson that sharply contrasts with the quirky visual aesthetic found throughout his work. Externally, Anderson's stories occupy realms populated by whimsical architecture and stylized characters, but such elements are typically in the service of stories very much in touch with reality. The themes of Anderson's works tap into universal human experiences just as potently as his visuals dazzle the eyes. His 2001 effort, The Royal Tenenbaums, is one of his most overtly despondent projects in tone as it explores the Tenenbaum family and the various problems its individual members are grappling with.

Rushmore Is A Phenomenal Examination of A Teenager Coming To Terms With Reality

Allow me to cut to the chase here and say, upfront and outright, that I absolutely loved Rushmore. This is a movie that just captured my attention from the moment it began and even long after its credits stopped rolling it's still occupying a space in my mind. The reasons for this are numerous, but before I detail those reasons, allow me to establish what exactly this motion picture is about. Rushmore begins by introducing our lead character, fifteen-year-old Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), in a math class where the teacher has put up a math problem that nobody he's ever known has been able to solve for extra credit. Putting down the newspaper he's reading in class, Fischer goes up to the board to solve it.