Michael Palin, Steve Buscemi, and Jeffrey Tambor star in director Amando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin
Review by Lydia Creech
Really nasty black comedies are hard to pull off. The satirical intent has to be focused and clear, the shocks have to serve a purpose (comedic or thematic), and, of course, it has to actually be, you know, funny. Thankfully, Armando Iannucci more than rises to the challenge.
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Festival Coverage by Andrew Swafford and Michael O'Malley
For four days in March, the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee combined a line-up of avant-garde musical and film acts. Andrew and Michael were able to catch a number of the films shown during the festival, including the 3D programming curated by The Public Cinema.
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Tye Sheridan in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One
Review by Zach Dennis
Maybe Ready Player One’s nostalgia isn’t for the actual culture of the 1980s but the culture of the 1980s — one that lacks the demand for tangible good from our industry leaders.
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Claire Foy in Unsane
Review by Zach Dennis
Unsane isn’t perfect and it doesn’t necessarily engage with the ideals of capitalism, health care and mental health that it wants to as well as it should. But there is something terrifying about its approach to a digital consciousness that feels too close to home.
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Still from "Let Your Light Shine" by Jodie Mack, one of the 3D shorts screened at Big Ears 2018
Festival Coverage by Michael O'Malley
As in previous years, Big Ears 2018 teamed up with The Public Cinema to curate a number of film programs to screen alongside the more traditional musical performances of the festival, but this year, The Public Cinema notably devoted one of its four programs entirely to 3D. Called Stereo Visions, the program consisted of ten different film events of impressive diversity, spanning narrative and avant-garde forms, contemporary and classic time periods, as well as short and feature-length works. It was a wild, sometimes confounding, and often exhilarating experience.
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John Boyega stars in director Steven S. DeKnight's Pacific Rim: Uprising
Review by Jordan Collier
Underneath all the one-liners, explosions, and giant robo-punches there was something special about the original Pacific Rim: it had a ton of heart. It was almost like del Toro’s inner 9-year-old excitedly rushed up and showed you his collection of robot and monster action figures and explained why each of them were so cool as he pretended to make them fight. Now imagine zooming out from this scene to find out it’s taking place in a room behind a one-way mirror in near-perfect laboratory conditions as a group of investors and producers silently tick box after box of what they think made the first one great.
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Reese Witherspoon and Storm Reid in A Wrinkle in Time
Review by Courtney Anderson
Wrinkle is a personal film. It’s a DuVernay project through and through: it’s all about love and light and hope with a little Black girl at the center. And I, for one, am very grateful for it.
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Alicia Vikander stars as Laura Croft in director Roar Uthaug's Tomb Raider
Review by Lydia Creech
Tomb Raider is about watching Laura become the competent archaeologist adventurer people claim she is, with struggles and trauma, rather than a vessel springing fully formed yet empty enough to project desire onto.
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Mindy Kaling, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon star in director Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time
Review by Lydia Creech
Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel Wrinkle in Time is cosmic in scope and theme, and just… leave it to Disney to reduce it to the personal. Badly.
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Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and Jennifer Jason Leigh star in director Alex Garland’s Annihilation
Review by Jordan Collier
Garland’s characters suffer due to Annihilation's grand scope. Thankfully, the themes and imagery are strong enough to stay with you well after you leave the theater.
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Jacob Batalon and Angourie Rice in Michael Sucsy’s Every Day
Review by Paige Taylor
We are given someone who understands humanity in the most empathetic way possible and who could potentially surpass any psychologist in history with all their rare, impossible insight, and yet what we’re given is just another YA person meets YA girl story.
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Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams in Game Night
Review by Reid Ramsey
To enlist John Francis Daley (Freaks and Geeks) and Jonathan Goldstein (Vacation) alongside the greats of Iranian cinema would be a mistake, but with Game Night (2018), their endeavor into high-concept thriller comedy, they make a case for themselves as serious directors.
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Lupita Nyong'o, Chadwick Boseman and Letitia Wright in Black Panther
Review by Courtney Anderson
Black Panther is sprawling movie that satisfies in a way a lot of superhero movies don’t.
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Dakota Johnson and Jaime Dornan star in the final installment of the Fifty Shades franchise
Review by Andrew Swafford
I like the Fifty Shades films. They aren’t perfectly constructed movies by any means, but seeing the evolution of the series’ central relationship between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey has been often delightful and always fascinating, even in its shortcomings. I want to attempt, in good faith, to present an exhaustive case for why the Fifty Shades series does not deserve its current status as a cultural punching bag.
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Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed
RReview by Zach Dennis
The revolutionary part of Creed is that it exposes the haunting nature of society’s expectations for men, and opens a dialogue of what that means, rather than doing anything to “solve” or “fix” it. Manhood is no longer measured by strength and power, rather, it requires a degree of vulnerability never exhibited by men before in popular culture.
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By Zach Dennis, Courtney Anderson, Michael O'Malley, Jessica Carr, Diana Rogers, Jessy Alva Swafford, Lydia Creech, Ben Shull, and Paige Taylor.
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Rebecca Spence and Jessie Pinnick in Princess Cyd
Review by Paige Taylor
Princess Cyd isn’t told in the story structure we’re comfortable with. It has loose ends and unanswered questions and feels more like a chapter than an entire story. But like happiness, and like fulfillment, cinema doesn’t have to stick to one recipe.
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Festival Coverage by Taylor Thomas and Lydia Creech
For three days in January, Bloomington PRIDE screened 25 short- and feature-length LGBTQ+ films from around the world for its 16th annual Film Festival. Taylor and Lydia were able to catch the films from two of the days, which included 6 features and over a dozen international and student shorts.
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By Zach Dennis, Andrew Swafford, Jessica Carr and Lydia Creech
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By Zach Dennis, Andrew Swafford, Jessica Carr, Lydia Creech, Reid Ramsey and Nadine Smith
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