Review by Reid Ramsey
By the end of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, it’s clear that Tarantino had two clear objectives: to entertain and to humanize Sharon Tate. The result is his most moving film — maybe his only moving film.
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The 2019 Shmight and Shmound Poll
By Nadine Smith
A few years ago I started a personal project to chart the tastes of that nebulous social organism known as “Film Twitter,” a body of various individuals who use Twitter to, well, talk about films. Over time, I noticed that the kinds of people who hung out on this corner of the web liked certain movies and disliked other movies, and I became interested in doing some kind of aggregation of taste to see if a consensus had emerged amongst Internet cinephiles.
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The Lion King (2019) by Jon Favreau
Review by Courtney Anderson
All the personality of the animated The Lion King has been sucked out, and we are left with a bunch of life-like animals — and the humans voicing them — looking and sounding like they’re going through their contractually obligated motions.
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Jonathan Majors and Jimmie Fails star in director Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) by Joe Talbot
Review by Jessica Carr
This was the first time in 2019 that I left the theater feeling like I had just witnessed something truly masterful. This film is truly a work of poetry-in-motion.
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Taron Egerton stars as Elton John in Dexter Fletcher’s biopic of the queer pop icon
Rocketman (2019) by Dexter Fletcher
Review by Logan Kenny
Rocketman has the same energy as your local bank putting up a rainbow flag outside its branch for Pride Month. It is all facade, all meaningless. I hope one day, audiences realise that they deserve more than this.
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Florence Pugh stars in director Ari Aster’s Midsommar
Midsommar (2019) by Ari Aster
Review by Michael O’Malley
Instead of turning off the horror to make room for comedy, Midsommar has comedy and horror coexist in the same space.
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Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Holland star in director Jon Watts’s Spider Man: Far From Home
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) by Jon Watts
Review by Courtney Anderson
Far from Home turns out to be a fun, but slightly uneven and familiar journey.
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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2019
Festival Coverage by Logan Kenny
For two weeks in June, the Edinburgh International Film Festival screened over 100 features from around the world. Although it is impossible to cover the festival in full, Logan here reports back on 8 titles he caught there.
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Cinematary Canon #12: Sweaty Movies
By Zach Dennis, Diana Rogers, Ash Baker, Andrew Swafford and Reid Ramsey.
Note: These films are not ranked by quality, but rather in chronological order.
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Wild Nights with Emily (2018) by Madeleine Olnek
Review by Zach Dennis
Wild Nights with Emily never outright makes the assertion that Dickinson’s supposed lesbian relationship was the stone-chiseled truth. While it presents evidence to the claim, the bigger exploration it poses to the audience is our outright acceptance to what we perceive as historical text.
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Our Time (2019) by Carlos Reygadas
Review by Etan Weisfogel
You don’t listen to a King Crimson record for the lyrics—it’s about how the music sounds. Our Time, for all its flaws, sings like few films in recent memory.
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Speed (1994) by Jan de Bont
Retro Review by Reid Ramsey
25 years following the release of Speed, the film remains one of the quintessential action movies of the 1990s.
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) by Michael Doughtery
Review by Logan Kenny
Even if you can put the eugenicist politics aside – which I believe you shouldn’t – and just try to view it as apolitical spectacle, Godzilla: King of the Monsters fails on every conceivable level.
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See You Yesterday (2019) by Stefon Bristol
Review by Courtney Anderson
One of my favorite things about this movie is that no matter how complicated the time-travel missions or the technology that made them possible became, the movie never lost focus of reality.
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Frank (2014) by Lenny Abrahamson
Retro Review by Ash Baker
This film has something to say about musicianship in an age where everyone who has a Macbook or an iPhone has instant songwriting software, and quite a bit more to say about what does or doesn’t make an artist.
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The Perfection (2019) by Richard Shepard
Review by Courtney Anderson
I don’t even know where to start with The Perfection. It’s been a day or two, and I’m still gobsmacked by what I witnessed. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know where I am. Please send help.
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Cinematary Canon #11: 21st Century Musicals
By Zach Dennis, Diana Rogers Ash Baker, Logan Kenny, Michael O’Malley, Nadine Smith and Reid Ramsey.
Note: These films are not ranked by quality, but rather in chronological order.
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Keanu Reeves reprises his role as John Wick in the action franchise’s third entry
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) by Chad Stahelski
Review by Logan Kenny
Parabellum is less assured and seamless as its direct predecessor and lacks the simplistic emotional throughline of the original entry, favouring a messier, shaggier approach which doesn’t always hit flawlessly. However, the faults aren’t what stick with me days after finishing it, and they likely aren’t what I’ll think of months from now. Mostly, I’ll be thinking of Keanu.
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This is an essay about a boy and his Pikachu.
Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019) by Rob Letterman
Review by Andrew Swafford
Throughout the marketing campaign leading up to the release of Detective Pikachu, I found myself bracing for the trainwreck that I imagined might be made of my beloved franchise. Now having seen the movie, I’m neither wholly mad nor impressed, but am rather left with a tangled thread of thoughts and associations ultimately leading me to the realization that it doesn’t matter what I think about this movie.
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2019 Nitrate Picture Show
Festival Coverage by Lydia Creech and Miranda Barnewall
For three days in May, the 5th annual Nitrate Picture Show, the world’s first festival of film conservation, screened 9 shorts and 9 features at the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, all from nitrate film prints. Nitrate film was the first kind of stock used for motion pictures, beginning in 1889 and going until 1951, when safety stock on an acetate base was introduced. Lydia and Miranda were able to catch all of the screenings, in addition to attending lectures and tours of the Eastman’s preservation facilities.
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