Project Hail Mary PROJECT HAIL MARY. Loving books just as much as movies and credibly accused of being a formalist, I am generally skeptical of adaptations for the screen. I suppose I find works of literary creation something like sacrosanct and will always bristle at the notion that there aren’t enough original ideas being developed […]
Screens
Posted inScreens
Some Good and Some Gold at the Oscars
Exigent circumstances prevented me from watching the majority of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, an event to which I had (to my own surprise) been looking forward. In the decade since I actually sat through one, my enthusiasm for the movies has done anything but wane. I had to consider why this event should stir […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Stitched Together
The Bride! THE BRIDE! Conceptually, this seems very much like something I could get on board with: a mid-1930s Chicago-set, Mafia-tinged feminist update on the Frankenstein story, embellished with punk-rock attitude and curb-stomping? Yes, of course, who wouldn’t want that? And in the early going, it seemed like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s return to the director’s chair […]
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Dark Suburban Corners
DTF St. Louis DTF ST. LOUIS. Some months ago, in a fallow period likely brought on by the end of a Taylor Sheridan binge, I had resigned myself to listlessly stream-scrolling, nearly paralyzed by the catastrophe of excess. In swooped my younger, frequently wiser brother, who recommended the decade-old series Patriot and, at that entertainment […]
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Top Model’s Ugly Side
Netflix docuseries revisits the obvious REALITY CHECK: INSIDE AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL. “That is the only way you change. That is the only way you get better: by someone calling you on your shit.” These are the words of legendary supermodel Tyra Banks at the close of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Netflix’s […]
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‘Wuthering Heights’ and Fennell’s ‘Wuthering’ Lows
WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2011), adapted by British director Andrea Arnold, tells a truth. The international film industry has seen many adaptations of Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic novel — often construed as a tale of forbidden love and irreconcilable differences with some directors opting for a more strict approach and others setting their imagination loose upon the […]
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Too Much, Not Enough and Perfect
NO OTHER CHOICE. It can be a stifling, stymying exercise to sit with one’s own predilections and preferences. Our current, rotten era has reinforced this, of course, but in this case, I’m thinking more specifically about the art and artists we enjoy — revere, even. We hope the work will be both reliable and unpredictable. […]
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Survival Instincts
Send Help SEND HELP. In a rare moment of self-preservation, I chose not to see and review Melania, fun though it might have been to dunk on it as every critic not employed by or chasing the favor of the Trump administration has. Its pedigree makes all the statement it needs to, helmed by Brett […]
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The Oscars and Sentimental Value
Sure as death and taxes, the Academy Award nominations are once again upon us. The big news: Sinners has obliterated the previous record for previous nominations. Time now being what it is — some previously unknown, unknowable glue-trap of speed and paralysis — a lot of time has passed since the movie debuted and, I […]
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The Rip is a Genre Good Time
THE RIP. When asked if we really “need” another crooked cop heist movie, I suspect most casual viewers — even cineastes — would say no. As a bit of a dork (I still haven’t earned the nerd title) and a basic genre enthusiast, I would argue that while we may not need it, a crooked […]
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‘Primate’ Fails to Evolve
PRIMATE. Upon re-examination of our newsroom Slack channel, it was Calendar Editor Kali Cozyris who first posted the link to the trailer for Primate and asked, “When are we seeing this?” But after the adrenaline rush of press day wore off and we remembered how goddamn unsettling simians are and how awful rabies is, we […]
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The Mysteries of Cloud and Eephus
The year 2025 being what it was — and the less said about that, the better, although the New Year doesn’t seem much better, so far — it was easy to miss some things. No excuse, but the unraveling of the social fabric, geopolitical fuckery, one’s own laziness and the continuing inability of the movie […]