Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie star in director James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted
Retro Review by Allie Chadwick
Even in movies about mental illness, there is still an element of sexualisation and passive stereotypes surrounding the portrayal of women, and it is interesting to examine these ideas in the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, wherein eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen does have sexual relations with men while she is in hospital, and her past sexual relationships are discussed by others during her stay.
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Maria Pankratz stars in director Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light
Retro Review by Nazeeh Alghazawneh
Reygadas is only interested in the very messiest components of our deepest transgressions because anything else would be the cinematic equivalent of making small talk. At the intersection of sexuality and spirituality, Silent Light explores an idea that the great Jesus-loving Kanye West so lucidly distills in his 2011 song “No Church in the Wild”: “deception is the only felony / So never fuck nobody without tellin' me.”
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Gal Godot stars as Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Review by Aster Gilbert
Justice League is about the merciless passage of time and how that passage can only be overcome through miracles.
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Tony Chu-Wai Leung, Jacky Cheung, and Waise Lee star in director John Woo’s Bullet in the Head
Retro Review by Joseph Bullock
Concerning three disillusioned friends who leave Hong Kong for wartime Vietnam after accidentally killing a gang leader, it merges the filmmaker’s iconic heroic bloodshed with Deer Hunter style Viet Cong sequences, riot scenes laced with allusions to the Tiananmen Square massacre, and – at its start – the conventions of crime cinema.
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From left to right: Elliot Gould, Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, and Dyan Cannon star respectively as Ted, Carol, Bob, and Alice in director Paul Mazursky’s radical relationship dramedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Retro Review / Personal Essay by Ren
The beautiful thing that Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice highlights about polyamory is the necessity of radical honesty in relationships.
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Actor and screenwriter Brea Grant stars in Lucky
Review by Seth Troyer
What at first appears to be a typical slasher quickly becomes a film that feels immediately personal for not only Grant but for all of the women involved in its production.
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Review by Aster Gilbert
At its best, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is a timely indictment of neoliberal centrism. The analysis presented across these six episodes, however messy, are essential. Where the series leaves off is where we now stand, facing down the barrel of a gun.
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Review by Etan weisfogel
Always and Forever takes the trilogy’s idealized fantasy world to a whole new level. The film’s message—that, despite life not going exactly as planned, it’s possible to adjust and adapt, to ride out the storm without giving up one’s goals or dreams—actually functions as something of an accidental allegory for the way COVID waylaid so many people’s lives.
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Review by Michael O’Malley
Earwig and the Witch faithfully converts hand-drawn imagery into computer animation while retaining none of the spirit of the former. It’s mind-boggling to think that Studio Ghibli could allow such a disaster to be released, and it’s absolutely no fun to report that this is a wretched failure. But it is one.
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Denzel Washington and Jared Leto star in director John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things
Review by Crue Smith
As I’ve read a handful of reviews and first impressions from critics, I kept coming across statements, that said something to the effect of “The Little Things is nothing more than a cliché cop drama, that doesn’t really have any aspects that sets this film apart from previous genre installments.” However, Hancock reliance on genre conventions isn’t the reason the film doesn’t hold up.
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Review by Seth Troyer
The post apocalypse genre, as of late, has become associated with young adult page turners. While this film showcases young characters yearning for a better life, Mare has far more to do with films like Tarkovsky's Stalker than it does The Hunger Games. This directorial debut from Nicholas Ashe Bateman is a feast for the eyes, mind, and heart.
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Gabriel Cañas stars in director Jorge Olguín’s La Casa
Review by Reid Ramsey
Did you happen to miss out on visiting any haunted houses this past Halloween due to COVID? Fear not – a new Chilean horror film named La Casa is here to transport you back to that feeling of fear and claustrophobia. Unfortunately, beyond its concept, La Casa does not offer much else for viewers.
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Review / Personal Essay by Paige Taylor
It is important to showcase the grim reality of the cross that women bear, but the only solution we can offer is to lose every bit of your soul to grief and rage, die at the hands of abusers, and allow our judicial system to handle the rest?
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Jayne Mansfield stars in director Frank Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Retro Review by Joseph Bullock
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? blazes past with a somewhat miraculous triviality. Outside of its dazzling pastel colours and elaborate visual design, many great qualities elevate it to the territory of genius screen comedy.
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‘Da 5 Bloods’ directed by Spike Lee and distributed by Netflix
Compiled by Cinematary Staff and Contributors
I won’t spend too much time with the usual “this year has been crazy” and other qualifiers and just say that 2020 has been a lot. Focusing solely on the movie output for the year was a tough task due to multiple factors and I’m happy that we had such a willing group of staff members and participants of the podcast or writing section that chimed in with their favorites from 2020.
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Retro Review by Miranda Barnewall
I loved watching these three together and being able to see this other side of Browning’s career that I wasn’t quite aware of before.
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Review by Logan Kenny
Mank is a film that frequently soaks itself in booze stains and nihilistic prophesying, alters conventional historical reports of his relationship with Orson Welles, and has managed to piss off the majority of the people who’ve seen it in some way or another. It is a messy, almost malignant tribute to the broken profiteering racket of the classic film industry and all the backstabbing, melancholy and destruction that comes with any form of success in its waters.
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Stranger Things star Joe Keery stars in director Eugene Kotlarenho’s Spree
Review by Crue Smith
By far the strongest aspect about Spree is its cinematic style and aesthetic, primary Kotlarenho’s editing sensibilities. The many points of view from the cast of characters are shown through GoPros, smartphone live streams, and Youtube videos, as well as cop car dash- and traffic-cameras. Compared to most of the other found-footage films, Spree has much more of a personal vision and Kotlarenho elevates this gimmick into a unique cinematic experience.
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Review by Ash Baker and Cam Watson
The movie Hillbilly Elegy is not about Appalachia, is not about injustice. It is not even about a family. Hillbilly Elegy is about poor J.D. Vance, a white boy who had to work hard.
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Retro Review by Seth Troyer
Bakshi and others attempted many different combinations to legitimize adult animation, but in hindsight, Martin Rosen’s 1982 film, The Plague Dogs sticks out from the rest. The film may indeed offer talking animals, but it refuses to pander to younger audiences. It displays gritty realism, yet its scenes of bloody violence never seem thrown in for simple horror thrills. It is an undeniably emotional experience that will shock adult viewers and children alike.
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