When one thinks of a bad car crash, they typically imagine it as being a loud, ugly and often bloody affair. Additionally, they think that such an incident would never involve them, that it is something that always happens to “other people.” On both these levels, The Courier – which is being released on BluRay,…Read more Film Review: The Courier (2019)
2010s Reviews
Film Review: The Irishman (2019)
"Would you like to be a part of this history?" When Jimmy Hoffa poses this question in Martin Scorsese's 24th feature film - the gangland saga The Irishman - the movie is already approximately a third of the way through its epic, three-and-a-half hour runtime. Yet despite its length, tonal restraint and veritable cadre of…Read more Film Review: The Irishman (2019)
Film Review: Hail Satan? (2019)
I recently had the opportunity to review an interesting doc entitled Hail Satan?. While the movie certainly grapples with important and timely themes, it is unfortunately a cursory look at the sick, hypocritical way that the Christian right has become embedded in American political life. Enjoy it all on FilmMonthly! Full Review
A Collection of Recent Reviews
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have largely retired from the film reviewing game. While it once served as my central writing focus, and, in fact, probably turned me into the writer I am today, I no longer find it to be my primary interest. Instead, I now plunk away mostly in the…Read more A Collection of Recent Reviews
Film Review: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
About six or seven years ago, I developed a minor obsession with the work of Ken Loach, the iconoclastic English director of acclaimed films like Kes, Looks and Smiles, Raining Stones, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Back then, I watched a number of these in quick succession.…Read more Film Review: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Film Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
John Requa and Glenn Ficarra's Crazy, Stupid, Love arrived at a highly specific point in time. The 2011 film premiered right as its star, Steve Carell, began to transition to more dramatic film roles. Additionally, his co-star, Ryan Gosling, was reaching his first career apex. Gosling starred in three films in 2011 (The Ides of…Read more Film Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
Film Review: First Reformed (2018)
Tranquil masculinity is not part of Paul Schrader's cinematic worldview. For over 40 years, anguished, alienated, fatalistic men have dominated his scripts and been front and center in films that bear his name. Quite often, this has worked out well, producing studies of masculinity, criminality, sexuality, mental illness, faith and violence that are quite shattering…Read more Film Review: First Reformed (2018)
Film Review: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Considering the Trumpian age in which we live, it's difficult to make the case that we need another film that revolves around the wild exploits of an angry, violent, middle-aged white man. Yet that is just what Lynne Ramsay's incredibly cynical film, You Were Never Really Here, serves up, trading in the brutal, reactionary fantasies…Read more Film Review: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Film Review: Black Death (2010)
From 1347 to 1351, the black death, also known as the bubonic plague and the great mortality, swept across Europe. In four years, it killed between 75-200 million people and altered nearly every aspect of medieval life in the process - from literature and art to economics and religion. The plague is at the heart…Read more Film Review: Black Death (2010)
Film Review: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Many films are a "guilty pleasure," entertainment you know you shouldn't like and that you certainly wouldn't admit to liking in mixed company. It's more rare, however, when a film appears on the scene that blows that definition out of the water, a film that you not only wouldn't admit to liking in mixed company,…Read more Film Review: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Adam Mohrbacher 