The word that kept flashing through my mind: sumptuous. Is this one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen? The costumes, the cinematography, the actors…my god, everything is so beautiful. Even the screenplay felt heightened, nearly poetic at times, in the same way the color palette was saturated and the lighting was lush. It… Read More If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Edie Falco is a goddamn national treasure. And RIP Lyn Shelton. That’s it; that’s the review.

I’ve honestly never been exposed to James Baldwin’s work, and after seeing this I could watch him all day. Fantastic movie, with a brilliant narration job by Sam Jackson. It was a little dreamy, a little unfocused at times but it didn’t need to be more so. The discursive structure worked when tackling a subject… Read More I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Obviously an important film, both in terms of representation (trans sex workers) and in terms of execution (famously shot on iPhones.) But much like Sean Baker’s later work The Florida Project, I found the movie quite difficult to watch. There’s a particular freneticism to the trauma he films that I have trouble processing (so much… Read More Tangerine (2015)

This movie was fucking cool, the way a Tarantino movie is just fucking cool. Killer soundtrack, arresting visuals, the whole works. The movie was pretty spare, but what it lacked in plot development it made up for in style and the whole thing worked for me.

Damn, I love Edgar Wright but this one didn’t work for me for lots of reasons. In the first third, Simon Pegg’s usual brilliance felt miscalibrated–he was pitched off-key relative to the other performances in a way that I found irritating (rather than irritating and lovable, which I would have wanted.) In the middle third,… Read More The World’s End (2013)

I loved this movie, and can’t imagine what it took for Haifaa al-Mansour to make it. It made me think back to watching Rome, Open City during this 100-year project in the way she was able to create art in some really inhospitable conditions. Also reminiscent of Bicycle Thieves in its use of a wonderful… Read More Wadjda (2012)

Loved this simple story, told with a lot of heart by Dee Rees and Adepero Oduye. I loved Oduye and Pernell Walker, both of whom inhabited their characters with a sense of authenticity that broke my heart. I wished at times some of the other characters had more to do, as there were hints of… Read More Pariah (2011)

Extremely gripping, extremely tough to watch. Especially difficult to watch this as a therapist, as you’re literally just watching trauma occur in real-time as it unfolds, thanks to some truly shocking camerawork by Hetherington and Junger. Wonderful film, but truly abhorrent subject matter. May all those involved find peace.

Didn’t work for me at all. There’s a core here that works–mother drawn to extreme lengths to protect the son accused of a crime. But the first 45 minutes dragged without me building a connection to any of the characters, so then I didn’t feel invested in much that came after. There were some strange… Read More Mother (2009)