Water Lillies Is An Intricately-Crafted Coming of Age Yarn

You tend to learn a lot about yourself when you're a teenager and that's all too true of the three lead characters of Water Lilies. The debut directorial effort from acclaimed auteur Celine Sciamma, the most prominent of this trio is Marie (Pauline Acquart). She's a teenage girl who usually spends her time getting into oddball mischief with best friend Anne (Louise Blachere). However, Marie is starting to spend more and more time with swimmer Floriane (Adele Haenel). Though ostracized by the other members of her swim team for her supposedly promiscuous ways, Floriane and Marie begin to develop an unexpected bond, one that leads them to discover that their sexuality is a lot more complicated than they initially presumed.

THX 1138 Kicked Off The Directorial Career of George Lucas With A Dark Future

In his time as a filmmaker, George Lucas has directed six feature films. Two-thirds of those are Star Wars movies, the franchise everybody associates him with. George Lucas is as directly connected to that galaxy far, far away as Walt Disney was to Mickey Mouse or Charlie Chaplin was to The Tramp. However, Lucas did manage to direct other films (two in fact!) beyond just ones set in the Star Wars saga. One of these was the 1973 box office smash American Graffiti, a feature following a group of 1950s teenagers over the course of one rowdy night. Aside from being a throwback to pop culture Lucas grew up on, it doesn't bear much resemblance to the cosmic adventures Lucas would become famous for.

Get Carter Works Best With Its Blocking And Its Michael Caine Lead Performance

Michael Caine has done a little bit of everything in his decades of on-screen performances. He's played the best version of Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol, he's done dark dramas, he's done goofy genre fare, there isn't an avenue of cinematic storytelling that Caine hasn't traipsed down. His extensive experience as an actor even extends to the world of gangster cinema. Caine headlined one of the most famous 20th-century British gangster movies with 1971s Get Carter. A cult classic that ended up being a favorite among filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, it still endures to this day as one of many peoples go-to pick for Caine's best work as a leading man.

In Laman's Terms: Marmaduke And How Far Studios Will Go To Embrace Trends And Brand Names

The saga of the Marmaduke movie never fails to turn up a new interesting wrinkle. I have just discovered that modern posters for this feature highlight Owen Wilson & Emma Stone as the leads whereas the original poster didn't even mention Stone. Instead, Owen Wilson & George Lopez were the two above-the-title stars.

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Movie trends consist of a single movie coming along, becoming extremely popular and a whole slew of other movies try to copy its most surface-level qualities in a bid to replicate that success. The examples of this phenomenon are numerous. The avalanche of sex comedies that followed in the wake of Porky's box office success, which happened again after American Pie made bank. Don't forget about all those 3D movies that came out after Avatar became the biggest movie of all-time or all those postmodern fairy tale comedies after Shrek became a hit. In the moment, movie executives get swept up in all the hype over something new making money and decide to greenlight half-baked ideas or incorporate equally half-baked in-theater technologies in the hopes of getting some of that money for themselves.

Frozen II Delivers Good Musical Numbers But Its Script Is Too Dense For Its Own Good

Doing Frozen II was an inevitability. Disney is a franchise-minded studio, the first one made more money than is conceivable, nobody needs a road map to figure out what comes next. Only the fourth sequel* Walt Disney Animation Studios has done up to this point, Frozen II, thankfully, isn't content to exclusively regurgitate the events of the first movie again. Unlike the direct-to-video animated Disney sequels I grew up on, Frozen II doesn't just give Elsa a kid who wants the complete opposite of what the first film's protagonist desired. Thank goodness, would anyone wanna watch Elsa deal with a child who could spurt fire from their palms? That would get so gruesome so quick.

Only the Brave Focuses On Characters Much To Its Benefit

Only the Brave came and went in a shockingly quick fashion in its October 2017 theatrical release. True, its lead subjects weren't as much of household names as, say, Chris Kyle, so the project was never going to hit Avengers: Endgame box office numbers. Still, a film like Only the Brave that seemed to push all the right buttons for older audiences in its marketing wiping out like it did (it made only $18.3 million domestically, just behind the domestic totals of CHiPS and The Circle among 2017 new releases) was shocking. Hopefully it can one day pick up a second life as a cult classic because Only the Brave is a shockingly good movie, one that's more just forest fires and bro-tastic dialogue.

The Director of Phoenix Delivers Another Emotional Knock-Out With Transit

In many ways, Transit reminded me less of director Christian Petzold's previous film Phoenix and more of texts I read in my Literature Under Dictatorship class this past Fall. Centered around books like Ivan Angelo's The Celebration written about experiences living under South American dictatorships, these texts frequently featured extended gazes into the psyche of the author (Angelo goes on long diatribes about the perceived pointlessness of his own writing, for example) as well as telling numerous individual smaller stories rather than just focusing exclusively on a singular protagonist. This way, the reader can get an accurate view of how a dictatorship impacts people on a widespread level.

The Conversation Is A Sublime Thriller That's Only Grown More Relevant In 2020

Francis Ford Coppola's best movie, The Godfather: Part II, dropped in December 1974, in the process becoming one of the greatest films of all-time and a Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. Also competing for that same award in the same year was another Francis Ford Coppola directorial effort entitled The Conversation. What a flex, not just dropping two movies in a year, but making both of them acclaimed motion pictures that traveled the 1970s zeitgeist while also scoring Best Picture nods. In this house called Land of the Nerds, we stan a legend, and such a feat alone renders Francis Ford Coppola as one.

Diane Is A Quietly Harrowing Exploration of Guilt

After we do something wrong, we say we're sorry, we promise to do better and then life goes on. That's how it's supposed to work, atonement from the sinner and forgiveness from those around the sinner. But it's never really that simple in life. No matter how much we apologize, no matter how much we try and rectify our behavior, the past still lingers in other people's minds and our own. Past sins tend to feel like some kind of endless tunnel we can never emerge from. Is there any way out? Even if there is, do we even deserve to find a way out? Such are the weighty questions plaguing the titular protagonist of Diane, an indie feature film from writer/director Kent Jones released last Spring.

Almost Famous Looks At Rock Stars and Finds Human Beings

In the 2010s, writer/director Cameron Crowe didn't have the best of luck when it came to his creative pursuits. We Bought a Zoo was a box office underperformer that spawned a wonderful Twitter account but little in the way of the acclaim that greeted Crowe's earliest films while Aloha....everything went wrong with Aloha. The trailer for Aloha looked like it belonged to a parody film, the actual movie was borderline incoherent and its racially insensitive casting is maybe the film's only legacy. Then there was the Showtime drama Roadies, which lasted a season and hasn't been mentioned since its final episode ended until this very moment.

The Hunted Has Two Exceptional Leads But A Boilerplate Story

For those two people out there who have been dying for an action movie that pits Tommy Lee Jones against Benicio Del Toro, well, the March 2003 feature The Hunted has got you covered. In this William Friedkin directorial effort, Del Toro plays a decorated U.S. soldier named Aaron Hallam who has had extensive experience taking down enemy forces with excessive gruesomeness. Now he's gone rogue from his handlers and committed a series of grisly kills on American citizens. Such slaughterings have caused local law enforcement to call in the aid of the normally reclusive L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones).

Gene Kelly and Company Engage in Delightful Musical Tomfoolery in On the Town

People who view movies through the lens of searching for "plot holes" or characters exclusively acting within logical frameworks would probably be driven batty by On the Town, a 1949 Gene Kelly musical that also saw Kelly stepping into the director's chair for the first time. You see, On the Town, like most old-school musicals, isn't dictated by logic, the behavior of characters isn't motivated by logic. Everything about the characters, and the movie itself for that matter, is influenced by what could make the most exciting musical numbers. Song and dance are the name of the game for On the Town and why wouldn't you have that be the primary motivators when your movie stars Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra?

Better Than Expected Disney Movie Togo Is All About A Snow Dog's Purpose

American cinema's current fascination with live-action dog movies continues onward. This time, instead of Sense8 Dog or Kevin Costner Racecar Dog, it's a real-life doggie, Togo, who was instrumental in pulling off that famous 1921 serum run during an Alaskan snowstorm that Balto got all the credit for. The aptly titled Togo can't help but remind one of how many live-action family movies about dogs we've gotten recently but it isn't long before it manages to establish its own identity and notably exceed the level of quality you normally see from these type of movies. In fact, it's probably one of the better features released by Walt Disney Pictures in recent years, though that's not saying something when the studios been focused on titles like The Lion King (2019).

Honeyland Is A Sweet Intimate Portrait of a Helpful Beekeeper

Given how often movies aim for endlessly gargantuan spectacle regardless of whether or not it works for their story or not, it's always refreshing to find an unabashedly simple motion picture like Honeyland. It crossed my mind more than once whether or not the basic premise of this project could sustain a feature-length story. Such thoughts quickly vanished as Honeyland constantly proved my doubtful thoughts misplaced. In fact, Honeyland is quite remarkable in how it gets such an engaging movie out of so little. Directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov demonstrate that it's not the number of tools you have, but how you use them.

The Utterly Impressive Crime Thriller Uncut Gems Will Leave Your Nerves Shattered

Saying that the new Adam Sandler movie Uncut Gems begins with a sequence taking place inside buttocks of Sandler's protagonist, Howard Ratner, might make you think this project is some kind of stealth Grown Ups sequel. But Uncut Gems isn't that at all, it's the newest project from Ben and Josh Safdie, the directorial duo responsible for Good Time. These two know how to deliver good movies and that means they have a great reason for starting Uncut Gems within someone's colon. Such an opening follows up a prologue sequence set in Ethiopia, where two miners discover a rare black opal gem. The prologue ends with the camera zooming into the gem, revealing all the dazzling colors within.

Douglas Laman's Twenty-Five Best Movies of 2019

A live image of people getting ready to devour Douglas Laman's Twenty-Five Best Movies of 2019 list

Ah, another year has come to an end. How is it already New Year's Eve once again? With 2019 about to head into the past, it's good to look back on what's happened to us all in the past 365 days. For me, it's been a year of momentous firsts as I attended my first film festival, did my first ever red carpet coverage, finished writing my first ever feature film screenplay and got my first ever paid writing gigs. In between all of that (plus college!), I managed to see a whole slew of new movies, 176 of them to be precise. Normally, I'd have to wait until late January or early February to publish this list thanks to so many new movies not coming to theaters near me until the new year. But thanks to the aforementioned film festivals I've been able to attend plus new advanced press screenings, I actually can do this Best Movies of the Year list before New Year's Eve for the first time ever! How about that, it's like I'm a real film critic or something!

Not changing from year's past is that this list will be done in alphabetical order sans one title that I've picked as the absolute best of the year. It was immensely tough to whittle down just 25 movies to represent the best of 2019 cinema, but it is done, I've achieved just that. Let's begin this Twenty-Five Best Movies of 2019 list with...

John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch Is A Very Specific And Very Funny Creation

You're gonna know right away if the specific style of humor of John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch is going to be for you or not. This is a satire of classic children's variety specials hosted by John Mulaney and a large collection of children that's broken up into an assortment of comedic musical numbers, off-the-wall gags skewering hallmarks of children's television (like those "Can You Guess What The Image Is?" puzzles) and a couple of celebrity cameos. Much of the humor seems designed to leave some viewers more baffled than amused and that's totally fine. All art is subjective but that's especially true when it comes to comedy.

Bombshell Lets Down Essential Perspectives With A Poor Movie

Based on the true stories regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault cases at Fox News, Bombshell chronicles a trio of individual stories each centered on a different woman (two of them being actual people, one of them being a fictional creation) working for Fox News, in-film narrator Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and newbie employee Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). Bombshell explores the work environment they reside in as well as the gradually increasing presence of a sexual harassment lawsuit (one spurred on by Gretchen Carlson) brewing against the network and its founder, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

Just Mercy Is A Courtroom Drama With Plenty of Empathy And Great Performances

Lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) has just graduated from Harvard with a law degree, which means there’s only one clear course of action to take one. That’s right, Stevenson is going to move down to Alabama and create a non-profit law firm that specializes in providing free legal services to death row inmates. It’s a crusade that’s highly unorthodox, to put it gently, especially considering Stevenson is a Black man trying to fight against a justice system that inherently sees people of color as immediately guilt. However, Stevenson wants to use his lawyer's gifts to help the most underserved of American citizens. After all, these are not inhuman monsters, but people who could be anybody. Heck, Stevenson himself observes to his Mother at one point that “It could have been me, Mama”

Noelle's Bursts of Originality Highlight Its Heavily Derivative Elements

SPOILERS FOR NOELLE AHEAD

There's a really interesting idea for a Yuletide family movie nestled within Noelle, one of the first original films made for the Disney+ streaming platform (it was once set for a November 2019 theatrical release). But much like a Christmas present tucked away at the very back of the tree, it remains out of grasp of writer/director Marc Lawrence. Well, mostly out of grasp I should say. There is a stretch of the third act where Noelle actually manages to hit upon something special and unique. Unfortunately, too much of it settles for being derivative, a hodgepodge mixture of Elf, The Year Without A Santa Claus and Arthur Christmas. 

Top Sixteen Cinematic Discoveries of 2019

We've come to the end of another year, my friends. How does all the time go by? In addition to completing two more semesters of college (just one more and I'll have a Bachelor's Degree!) and getting my first three paid writing gigs, I also managed to watch a whole slew of classic movies for the very first time. The amount of acclaimed classic cinema I managed to finally catch up on 2019 was vast, making it hard to par down a Top Sixteen Cinematic Discovers of 2019 list. Despite its daunting nature, I managed to get such a list made and looking back on these sixteen specific titles fills me with oodles of joy, both because of the quality of the titles themselves and also for how many of these movies are connected to happy memories of mine in 2019. Cinema and my life have always been permanently intertwined and 2019 was no different.

Let's begin this look back on my Top Sixteen Cinematic Discoveries of 2019 (done in alphabetical order) starting with...

Grab Your Catnip For The Musical Madness of Cats

Musicals are inherently absurd creations. People don't sing their feelings in real life, after all. Because they work as the antithesis to reality, the best musicals can create sights & sounds you'd never see in another medium of creative expression. Avenue Q, for example, where else could you see a puppet show that doesn't even try to conceal that the puppets are being operated by people? Or how about Little Shop of Horrors or The SpongeBob SquarePants Musical? Both thrive on unabashed weirdness! Such strange yet enjoyably bold creativity is why I love musicals. When people think of musical oddness, though, one go-to reference point might be Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical Cats.

The Two Popes Has A Formulaic Script But Two Solid Lead Performances

The idea that the best leaders are the ones who don't want to become a leader is heard early on in The Two Popes and it's an apt descriptor for Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce). An easygoing fellow open to new practices (a sharp contrast to the Catholic Church's default to tradition) and who works as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio is preparing to retire. This is a task that requires him to get the permission of the current Pope, Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins), who's the total opposite of Bergoglio in every way. Turns out, Bergoglio's prospective retirement is coming just as Benedict XVI is facing a slew of scandals that mean he could use the aid of Bergoglio.

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.

What A Twist!: Spoiler Thoughts on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (SPOILERS)

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER AND JOJO RABBIT BELOW

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Closes Out The Saga On An Underwhelming Note

For the final entry in the nine-film Skywalker Saga, we reunite with the heroes of the most recent entries in the story, scavenger turned Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley), stormtrooper turned Resistance hero Finn (John Boyega) and folk singer turned pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). Ultimate baddie Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has returned from the dead and is now working with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) on a whole new evil plot. In order to save the galaxy and win the war against these dastardly foes, Rey must muster up all her courage and confront both old & new evil forces as well as her struggle to define who she is.

Jumanji: The Next Level Delivers Some Laughs But Can't Quite Hit A High Score

The good news with Jumanji: The Next Level is that it's hard to dislike this Jake Kasdan directorial effort. How many comedy sequels can you say that about? Unfortunately, at the same time, it's also hard to really get wrapped up in this fourth entry in the Jumanji universe (yes, Jon Favreau's Zathura is apparently canon). It's not necessarily because the production is a big mess or that a singular element has gone horribly wrong in the scripting department. It's just the gags just aren't as spry as before, the adventure stuff still feels more perfunctory than it should, enough stuff comes up just short that it begins to add up after a while.

One Cut of the Dead Is Constantly Full of Wonderful Surprises (SPOILER REVIEW)

SPOILERS FOR ONE CUT OF THE DEAD FOLLOW

I've mentioned this in prior reviews, but when I'm watching a movie, I tend to live in the present. Sometimes I can predict plot beats coming a mile away if a movie is really just tedious, but usually I'm like a horse on a racetrack; stuck with blinders on that keep me focused on only what's in front of me. I'm not sure if that's something related to my particular form of Autism or if that's just a Douglas Laman thing, but this means twists and turns in movies tend to hit me extra hard. This means the barrage of already clever surprises that make up the crux of One Cut of the Dead were like a revelation to me. Going into this movie totally unaware of what it was beyond just being the newest acclaimed zombie comedy made this such a rich and exciting cinematic experience!

In Laman's Terms: The Definitive Ranking of the Six Best Star Wars Characters

Max Rebo, one of the greatest Star Wars characters of all-time

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Star Wars discourse is toxic. It's been that way ever since the Phantom Menace backlash caused Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd to receive relentless bullying and the ever-growing presence of the internet in the modern era has only accelerated that level of toxicity for the modern Star Wars movies. With The Rise of Skywalker just two days from release, the Star Wars discourse is about to get revved up into overdrive and inevitably, a large sum of that is gonna be virulent. In an effort to combat that, I've decided to make a positive Star Wars essay for this weeks In Laman's Terms column. I've decided to run down six background/supporting Star Wars alien characters I adore. Basically, this is The Definitive Ranking of the Six Best Star Wars Characters!

No Han Solo to be found here, but plenty of distinctively designed aliens are ahead, starting with...

Dead or Alive Begins and Ends With A Bang...Literally

Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive certainly begins with a bang, doesn't it? That iconic opening sequence is like the love-child of Edgar Wright & the Safdie Brothers on a hundred Red Bull's and also a healthy dose of bath salts. Said opening sequence depicts a bevy of human beings being taken out in violent ways by a group of criminals. The editing used to cut between individual locations is Road Runner-fast and none of the deaths are subtle. Noodles explode from one dying person's body instead of blood and the presence of drugs and sex is similarly pervasive in this stretch of bravura filmmaking. To watch this opening scene of Dead or Alive is to feel like you've just gone on the world's faster rollercoaster, your head is spinning, your mind is in shambles yet you kind of want to do it again?

Sweetheart's Script Can't Quite Balance Monster Mayhem With Human Drama

We get about five or six Blumhouse Productions movies a year that get major theatrical releases, the likes of Get Out, The Purge and Halloween (2018) but what about the rest of Blumhouse's annual output? The Jason Blum-run production outfit actually releases more films annually than you might realize, they just end up getting way less prolific direct-to-video bows after brief film festival runs. Such a fate is the one seen by their 2019 feature Sweetheart, a new directorial effort hailing from J.D. Dillard, the filmmaker behind the 2017 film Sleight. After debuting at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, Sweetheart basically vanished before getting dropped on digital retailers in October (currently, there is no physical home video release for the title).

Richard Jewell Is Another Empty Modern-Day Clint Eastwood Directorial Effort

What on Earth has happened to Clint Eastwood as a filmmaker this decade? The iconic Western gunslinger turned director has spent his most recent years helming features like American Sniper, The 15:17 to Paris and Sully that are just tedious rehashes of real-world events with nary an interesting perspective or trace of memorable filmmaking to be found. Little in the way of thoughtful exploration of the perspective of human beings caught up in the grand sweep of history can be found, his recent movies have been too bland for that. Even his foray into musical cinema with Jersey Boys used the same shadow-heavy cinematography and lack of thoughtful character work that have plagued Eastwood's recent efforts.

Cinema Paradiso Poignantly Reaffirms The Emotional Power of Movies

Unless you’re Paul Schrader, chances are you have fond childhood memories connected to cinema if you’re an adult devotee of movies. For me, it’s my faint memories of being an expert in inserting and ejecting VHS tapes in my families VCR player before I even learned how to talk! That kind of childhood connection to cinema can have long term effects that are felt well into adulthood and Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning feature Cinema Paradiso isn’t just aware of this, it’s the foundation on which the entire story is built. Unlike sand, the experience of youthful love for cinema turns out to be a great foundation on which to build something.

Waves Is A Frequently Successful Ambitious Directorial Effort From Trey Edward Shults

Writer/director Trey Edward Shults has previously been responsible for two movies, Krisha and It Comes At Night, that generated much of their tension from restricting their stories about families going through turmoil primarily to singular locations. Through this restrained method, Shults has created some memorable pieces of intense cinema, but for his newest movie, Waves, Shults is looking to expand his creative canvas. Waves is a project that doesn't just span numerous locations, it also takes place over an expansive amount of time (a sharp contrast to the likes of Kirsha that took place over a holiday dinner) and utilizes a number of bold visual techniques such as shifting aspect ratios. Oh, and Shults is also going to comment on a number of real-world social issues.

A Bunch of Famous Names Can't Make 6 Underground Interesting

Two very distinct creative talents have formed a union to bring the new Netflix blockbuster 6 Underground to life. In one corner, we have director Michael Bay, the man behind the first five Transformers movies and an assortment of other high-octane action films. In the other corner, we have the writing duo of Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick, the screenwriters who penned the two Deadpool movies. Though both known for making movies where big things blow up, their sensibilities are quite different. Bay is known for his lavish hyperactively edited visual-oriented productions whereas Reese & Wernick tend to work in the confines of mid-budget comedic exercises relying heavily on snappy self-referential dialogue.

The Heavily Moving And Impressive A Hidden Life Is Terrence Malick At His Finest

In the past, me and the works of Terrence Malick just haven't gotten along. I actually really liked Days of Heaven but much of his 21st-century-works, including his widely acclaimed The Tree of Life, ended up leaving me cold. Malick must be doing something right considering how so many of his movies have left such a profound impact on so many, but sadly, his movies have predominately left me unmoved rather than engrossed. Keeping all that in mind, watching his newest motion picture, A Hidden Life, was like a lightbulb going off in my brain. All the distinct traits of his recent works, ceaseless voice-over, slow pacing, a singular style of camerawork, that had come off as self-indulgent in other works were put to fantastic use in the context of this story. Count me in on the Malick hype for A Hidden Life, this movie truly works.

Atlantics Ain't Afraid of No Ghost...or Committing to Bold Storytelling & Cinematography Choices

In art, the act of falling in love with someone is connected with the notion of being alive. In the traditional language of cinema, being able to connect with another person is to reaffirm that you're indeed a living, breathing person. How ironic, then, that Atlantics would be a romantic-drama that would so heavily feature ghosts. Whether they come in the forms of Casper or entities the Ghostbusters would track down, ghosts are always depicted as the very opposite of love, and by proxy, the very opposite of the traditional cinematic depiction of romance. But writer/director Mati Diop works wonders in bringing together life and death for a one-of-a-kind romantic drama.

In Laman's Terms: Award Season Continues To Fail Non-White Male Filmmakers...Now What?

An image from Little Women, a movie not worthy of awards because it stars fleshed-out women rather than a dude in clown makeup dancing down a staircase.

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

There have only ever been five women nominated for the Oscar for Best Director.

Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig are the only ones to break into the category. Looking over to the Best Picture Oscar category, only fourteen movies directed by women have been nominated for Best Picture in the 91-year-history of the Academy Awards. Of those fourteen movies, only one (Selma) has been helmed by a woman of color. Clearly, this stunningly low level of recognition for women is not representative of actual Hollywood, where women have been directed films since Alice Guy-Blanche was helming motion pictures in the earliest days of Hollywood.

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.

My Neighbor Totoro Is Irresitbly Pleasant Hayao Miyazaki Fare

You know how some movies tend to stuff their movies too full of extraneous conflict when their central premise has enough tension? My Neighbor Totoro is the exact opposite type of film, this is a feature film that runs entirely away from the traditional concepts of creating tension or danger in a movie. No villains are found here, there's no apocalyptic plot to foil. You don't need tension to make a good movie and My Neighbor Totoro is proof positive of that. It's just about two sisters enjoying the company of some fantasy creatures. It's a gentle hug of a motion picture, Hayao Miyazaki's love for the natural world at its most serene.

Douglas Laman's Thoughts on the Male-Centric 77th Golden Globe Nominations

First of all, before we get into the nominees for this year's Golden Globe ceremony...why must Ricky Gervais host this again? I know his devil-may-care attitude seems like a perfect fit for the loosey-goosey style of the Golden Globes, but his hosting stints have proven to be more awkwardly unfunny in years past than uproarious comedic experiences. Plus, why are we having a guy whose comedy is so tired that he resorts to transphobic humor hosting a major award ceremony? There are so many better options to choose from! Rachel Bloom! John Mulaney! Tiffany Haddish! Oooo! We could go full chaos and have Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress host! Let's do that instead of having Ricky Gervais host the Golden Globes once again.

Out of Sight Is Another Steven Soderbergh Crime Movie Winner

If you’re watching a Steven Soderbergh movie, it’s likely gonna have a burning contempt for the wealthy. That's been an especially notable fixture in his most recent cinematic works, even the one psychological thriller he did in 2018. There also might be heist movie elements, though there are plenty of titles in his filmography (like Contagion) devoid of influences of that genre. Still, there are a number of entries in Soderbergh’s canon that do manage to combine those two central thematic elements, with one such example being his 1997 motion picture Out of Sight.

Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story Is A Powerful Piece of Filmmaking

In many ways, it feels like Noah Baumbach has been working his whole career to get to the point where he could make Marriage Story. Throughout his nearly quarter-of-a-century of making movies, fractured families have been a recurring element across a number of his works. The concept of people you're supposed to be closest to having deep-seated problems with one another is one that Baumbach's explored plenty of times beforehand, but never in as insightful of a manner as he has with Marriage Story. Here, the scope is grander, the characters are richer in detail and the emotional moments really hit you in both the gut and the heart. 1995 Noah Baumbach couldn't have made a movie like Marriage Story that so unflinchingly tackles the complexities of going through with a  divorce. Turns out, waiting for him to be ready as a filmmaker was more than worth the wait.

"Can I Be Your Legacy?": A Review of Queen & Slim

Though it eventually sprawls out into becoming a movie following two people evading law enforcement across multiple state lines, Queen & Slim starts out under extremely mundane circumstances. Angela (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Ernest (Daniel Kaluuya) are sharing a first-date dinner together at a diner. It's not going ideally, their conversations keep going nowhere, perhaps because their personalities couldn't be more polar opposite. Angela is a defense attorney determined to always stand up for something as small as a miscooked order of eggs while Ernest is a soft-spoken go-with-the-flow Costco cashier. Sparks don't exactly fly between the two of them.

1917 Puts You On The Nerve-Wracking Front Lines of World War I

It started out as a relatively normal day. Well, as normal as it can be behind enemy lines in World War I. Still, soldiers Lance Corporal Blake (Dean Charles-Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield (George McKay) were not expecting their day to go like this. They’ve both been suddenly recruited to deliver a message on foot to another battalion informing them to call off tomorrow’s attack against enemy forces. Turns out the whole battle is a trap. In order to get to their destination, Black and Schofield will have to walk across all kinds of terrain, from No Man’s Land to an abandoned farmhouse to a demolished city, all of which are packed with deadly obstacles.

Hotel by the River Quietly Captures Humans Struggling To Connect

Winter always gets me into a melancholy reflective mood. It's hard to put into words why, but it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one whose introspective mood tends to intersect with the chilly weather. Poet Young-Hwan (Ju-bong Gi) is also having the same kind of contemplative mood as the snow falls outside, though his own personal circumstances are informing his current mindset more than the external weather. As he sits in his hotel room, he decides to call up his two estranged sons, Kyung-Soo (Hae-hyo Kwon) and Byung-Soo (Joon-Sang Yang) to meet up with him in the lobby of the hotel.

In Laman's Terms: What Non-Disney Movie Could Top The 2020 Box Office?

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Con Air Is Anything-Goes Ridiculousness, Which Is A Good Thing

Con Air begins and ends as a music video for How Do I Live by Trisha Yearwood. In between, a lot of recognizable actors dodge explosions. This is the aptest summary for the directorial debut of Simon West, which might be the epitome of the 1990's American action movie filmmaking if Face/Off didn't exist. That doesn't mean Con Air is the absolute best American action movie made in this era, but it does embody a number of the traits found in abundance in this era. A plot clearly aping Die Hard. Lots of R-rated action. Dialogue that runs the gamut from cornball to unbelievably hokey. Recognizable landmarks going boom. Oh, and it's also pretty fun to watch.

Live-Action Disney Remakes Come To Streaming With Lady and the Tramp

You didn't think 2019 would close out without one more live-action remake of a classic animated Disney movie? The fifth one of these in 2019 arrives in the form of Lady and the Tramp, which also serves as one of the first original films on Disney's new streaming platform Disney+. This newest remake also serves as a throwback title for Disney, one that harkens back to their more traditional family films like Homeward Bound and Beverly Hills Chihuahua rather than the mega-budget live-action remakes that define modern-day Disney family entertainment. That's not inherently a good or bad thing, but it does give one an idea of what kind of original movies we can expect Disney+ to deliver in the coming years.

The Good Liar Is A Subpar Hitchcock Knock-Off (SPOILERS)

Isn't internet dating a pain? The Good Liar makes the awkwardness of such experiences clear without even getting into the modern-day pitfalls of Catfishing or specific peculiar personalities you could only find on Grindr. But even if internet dating isn't perfect, it did at least bring Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) and Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) together. The two of them bond over a shared sense of humor and them being widows. Sure, McLeish's grandson may not like Roy all that much, but it doesn't matter, the two of them share a connection. Unbeknownst to Betty McLeish, though, Roy is not who he seems. He's a scammer looking to take her for every penny she has and this cutthroat dude is willing to do whatever it takes for hefty sums of cash.