Week In, Week Out

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

Challenger: The Final Flight (2020): I’ve always had an interest for the game of…space and tell and vividly recall the Columbia disaster in 2003. Challenger was the perfect storm 17 years before, a tragic tale of hubris and the institutional complexities that so often undermine us. Steven Leckart and Glen Zipper have created a thoroughly… Read more

In Fabric (2018): Coming across a movie as gorgeous as Peter Strickland’s In Fabric is a rare thing. It being a complex B-movie about a killer dress and yet engaging all your senses is nigh on unheard of. So for all aficionados of the Lynchian vibes, this pseudo-horror-comedy is surely for you – a movie… Read more

Frankenstein (1931): Movies of the 30s are an acquired taste, with their post-silent-era narrative and acting eccentricities. Yet, Frankenstein feels almost modern in this context, perhaps because a non-speaking monster was a good fit for the medium – and Boris Karloff a nuanced performer. The age old story of the crazed doctor and his criminal… Read more

Sweetheart (2019): I kinda feel that the best movies at expressing deep rooted discrimination, abuse and inequality have been horror movies. There’s something about clever allegories, subtle nuances and metaphors that find just the right frame to emphasize some of the dark, twisted realities of our world. In Sweetheart, Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) is shipwrecked on… Read more

My Name is Tanino (2002): Way before Paolo Virzi did La pazza gioia (2016) or Il capitale umano (2013), he directed My Name is Tanino, a movie that stands out as being the feature film debut of Rachel McAdams. However, it also stands out as a meandering story of becoming for its lead, the young… Read more

The Russian Five (2018): With all my experience of hockey coming about during that one edition of NHL I played relentlessly in the early 2000s, I still look upon the sport with a certain fondness. This is a phenomenal underdog story, about the Detroit Red Wings finally finding their groove and winning the Stanley Cup… Read more