Tributary Stu

The Dig (2020): A good period piece is always enjoyable and, for the most part, The Dig is just that. Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan are fascinating to watch in the interbelic story of one of Britain’s greatest archeological finds and while the movie focuses on them and their intrepid exploration, it’s engrossing. Unfortunately, about… Read more

Une fille facile (2019): A little dormant gem on Netflix, Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl is a coming of age story that turned out considerably more wholesome than I expected. Leaving prejudice at the door, it tells the story of 16-year-old Naima’s summer with Sofia, her older cousin, who is, as many would surmise, the… Read more

See You Yesterday (2019): We’re back in the Bronx, this time with a time-travel story that proves considerably more impactful than last week’s vampire saga. In a way it’s funny, because there are a lot of similarities between the movies – pop reinterpretations of popular concepts, starring teens from US minorities, using the fantasy/sci-fi stories… Read more

Minari (2020): We’re getting close to awards season, Minari being one of this year’s contenders – and definitely a movie I relished. Looking at familiar tales of family and patriarchal pride, it tells the story of “a Korean family moving to Arkansas to start a farm in the 1980s” (via IMDb). The slow, deliberate pacing,… Read more

Requiem for a Dream (2000): So why not start the year with something shocking and daunting? Twenty years ago, Aronofsky rocked our puny world with his ramped up, drug infused drama on addiction and loneliness – and I’ve always felt that Requiem is more about the latter, than the former. Critics disliked the heavy handed… Read more

The End of the Tour (2015): This movie set me on a four-year adventure of reading Infinite Jest, which I finally finished last week. So, naturally, I immediately re-watched James Ponsoldt’s adaptation of David Lipskey’s book on meeting and interviewing David Foster Wallace. It was a good watch the first time around and remained as… Read more

Heroes (2020): Coming from Manish Pandey, writer and executive producer on Senna (2010), this latest documentary on the lives, careers and intertwined fates of five memorable racing drivers of the 80s, 90s and 2000s is just tough to take. Parts feel distinctly staged, insights could have been more revealing, but the movie does very, very… Read more

All the Real Girls (2003): You know those movies all sweet and dripping with melancholy like your highschool crush as she pushes herself up against the edge of the swimming pool? That’s what AtRG feels like, a sad, mostly true, frequently beautiful, occasionally sappy tale of first love, of childhood friendships, of dreams and expectations.… Read more

During the last few days, I eked beyond the mark of 3,500 movies watched. That’s over 6,000 hours, but still some way to go until I round out a full year’s worth of movie watching. So by the time my consciousness will be uploaded to the cloud at the ripe old age of 104, odds… Read more

La Grande Bellezza (2013): Hard to believe it’s been seven years since La Grande Bellezza was released. It’s a movie I’ve seen many times already, each one as pleasurable as the one before, particularly thanks to the complex thematic layering and the fantastic cinematography. While in some ways similar to Sorrentino’s follow-up, Youth, Bellezza says… Read more

The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020): Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in one of 2020s best movies, a thoughtful, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable story about finding your voice and fighting for what you think is right and proper. This is the rare movie about art and artists that finds the perfect balance in portraying what the… Read more

Spontaneous (2020): This was a week dominated by teen movies and rom-coms, all enjoyable, none quite exceptional. Well, that is, until Spontaneous, which is, at least, something completely different. Starring Charlie Plummer and Katherine Langford as Dylan and Mara, two high-school seniors who have their lives rocked as colleagues start combusting for no apparent reason.… Read more