Jared Mobarak

It’s the story of a young woman coming of age against the backdrop of both the injustices of her family and country. The former is overtly portrayed by the events that lead Margo to run, but the latter is never far behind despite its more subtle inclusion.

Anyone who watches this genre will be able to guess what’s happening fairly early. It therefore becomes about the character. Liking him makes the journey worthwhile.

Crampton and Fessenden are great in their respective roles both when the drama asks them to grab our attention and the comedy asks them to goof around

People who like this type of film will have a blast while those who don’t are caught glancing at their watches in hopes the end is finally near.

Milburn does the right thing as far as keeping a nihilistic tone for his conclusion, but it lacks the teeth to get us holding our breath. We restlessly await our own escape instead since we already suffocated about forty minutes prior.

McCormack and Morgan aren’t interested in sanitizing the messiness that goes into a woman accepting herself outside the men’s world she was born into. It’s why finding financing took years. It’s also why Sugar Daddy is so uniquely good too, though. They’ve put an honest, coarse, and authentic human being on-screen who’s breaking through the façade she didn’t even know she was helping to cultivate.

The result is imperfect (the acting can be uneven outside of Howard’s innate talent to demand the undivided attention of everyone on-screen and off), but its messaging and execution is a lot more resonant than I expected going in—a less successful sibling to Blinded By the Light.

By documenting the struggle, Underplayed preserves the artists’ voices and shames the gatekeepers so history can’t be retroactively rewritten without receipts.

Odenkirk’s ability to juggle both sides of what it means to protect his loved ones does help alleviate a lot. Casting him at all in a role like this alleviates even more because it allows us to wrestle with preconceptions and enjoy the idea that you don’t have to be as big as Daniel Bernhardt’s “Bus Goon” to wreak havoc.

Anxiety is high at the start of Jesse Noah Klein’s Like a House on Fire.

McHale and Bishé are the ones who carry things because only they (like us) are aware of the sinister goings on beneath their over-the-top lust and the increasingly transparent surrealist nightmare entrapping them. Their dynamic is simultaneously an impossible ideal and an authentic reality to aspire towards. Mankind’s unwitting heroes.

Zbanic expertly wades through the scenario so that we aren’t taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, she includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead. What’s more is her ability to weave in the reality that this fight concerns divisions on the lines of religion and race rather than pure geography.

The film is at its best when it lets Elbaum to dig further back into the canvas’ history and the connections born from it.

It’s almost as if Frye’s childhood was stolen to some extent by this whirlwind of sensory experiences, rebellion, and dual lives she’s only now able to unpack, interpret, and acknowledge with fresh eyes recontextualizing memory through truth.

Luckily the familial and personal stuff has the strength to stick in our heads when the battle on the court fades because the work the actors put in is effective.

A violent lark playing fast and loose with its science fiction so Grillo can have a blast.

Get ready for a tense ride because writers/directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Rose Plays Julie never relinquishes its sense of brooding until the very last frame’s welcome exhale of relief.

Unconcerned with happy or sad endings (or endings at all beyond the desire for one to be shared and enjoyed to its fullest), [Sødahl] focuses instead on the unbridled emotions that swirl within us on the difficult journeys through tragedy. Nothing is out of bounds.

Let this tale be a stepping-stone then—a beautifully rendered and energetic one at that. Let it entertain while planting the seeds of acceptance and understanding so our children can build upon that foundation and be better than the insular generations that failed before them.

It may use broad strokes at times, but it never loses its purpose to illuminate our double standards or naiveté towards them. Change really does start with something as simple as Tunde’s request to be heard.

At the end of the day this is a hollowly reductive account of what happened with a weird subtextual rich punk against blue collar cop agenda falling woefully flat.

It’s absolutely exhausting.

That DiCamillo’s original was so funny, weird, and poignant should have been reason enough to hew closer to its brilliance instead of using it as a springboard towards something wholly different underneath its appropriated skin. I’d like to say those unfamiliar with the source will fare better, but the film’s homogenized narrative renders it inert regardless.

Everything has a purpose, from the deer whistle to a clearing of bleached white skulls, as modern medicine diagnoses that which our minds can safely process while our eyes warn us about how much worse things might be outside the realm of science.

Everyone on-screen holds fear in their hearts because they think the complexity of the situation is beyond their means. The question is whether they’re willing to try anyway.

Cvetko isn’t therefore interested in mining what it means for these three to get together. That they join is inevitable. It’s what this relationship gives them that matters.

You can’t deny its visual panache via immersive cinematography and production design. That it never embraces the supernatural element it teases is disappointing, but far from a dealbreaker.

Lutz has composed a university lecture in its own right: educationally pragmatic and historically enlightening.