Rehabilitation in the prison system is much more than the news would have you believe. Featuring Colman Domingo and Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor Paul Raci alongside many real-life formerly incarcerated men, director Greg Kwedar sets out to tell the story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing in Sing [...]
Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus hits cinemas at a precarious time. On the one hand, the 20th Century Studios’ film is at a feverish high from fans whose expectations from the film series’ seventh entry in the 45-year-old franchise is equally as high, especially with the tepid reactions to producer Ridley Scott’s previous two films, Prometheus [...]
Romantic comedies are a tricky genre to pull off these days; they’re either honey-suckle-sweet or overly ambitious in the comedy department. In short, rom-com stories can be inconsistent in what they’re trying to say. On the other hand, audiences have become very fickle toward rom-coms. Fortunately for Fly Me to the Moon, director Greg Berlanti [...]
In recent years, a trend has emerged within filmmakers who seek to make a strong emotional point through their stories. Depending on the subject, these stories can either come at you all at once or slowly unfold in front of the audience. Intent exists within these two choices and if the creatives have done their [...]
Reflecting on writer-director Jeff Nichols’ filmography (Mud, Midnight Special, Loving), one can’t help but think about his tendency for stories that naturally and slowly build their tensions up with fully realized characterizations that lead their stories, rather than the stories leading the characters. Nichols’ latest, The Bikeriders exceptionally continues this trend. Inspired by a 1967 [...]
Bluntly put, life on Earth ends for us all, whether we want it to or not. You can try to cheat it, you can deny it or for those who your existence has touched, you can cope with it. This is an unfortunate certainty. For those who remain behind, the “coping” part is often the [...]
We often live our lives as events unfold, with these events either being a result of choice or not. That is a stunningly simple statement regarding the human condition that is not fully justified, however, it also speaks to how we interact with other people. When thinking about Christopher Burke’s For Love & Life: No [...]
Throughout the Planet of the Apes film franchise, makeup, and technology have impressed audiences. With Pierre Boulle’s novel serving as a reference point for a world ruled by apes and humanity being subjugated to a lower form, the rebooted film series that began in 2011 continues with Wes Ball’s (The Maze Runner trilogy) brilliant Kingdom [...]
Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers throws more trysts and turns at a viewer than a decent thriller, as it serves up a love triangle set between a trio of tennis players, Patrick (Josh O’Connor), Art (Mike Faist) and, Tashi (Zendaya) against a wild card tennis match event in New Rochelle, NY. The story, by Justin Kuritzkes, is [...]
Talking about R. J, Daniel Hanna’s Hard Miles isn’t difficult. Based on a true story and written by Hanna and Christian Sander, the writing duo set out to tell the story of Greg Townsend (Matthew Modine). Townsend, a part of a private juvenile facility for troubled teenagers, rallied various kids through a grueling and ultimately [...]
