Posts in 5 STARS
MOVIE REVIEW: I, Tonya

For anyone who thinks Suicide Squad star and The Wolf of Wall Street vamp Margot Robbie is just a hot bod and a pretty face, watch I, Tonya.  The 27-year-old Aussie’s ferocious and zealous performance riding the peaks and valleys of disgraced former champion figure skater Tonya Harding will erase those old notions centered solely on attractiveness.  Brimming with depravity and teaming with talent, I, Tonya may be the brashest film you will see seen this year

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MOVIE REVIEW: Phantom Thread

Phantom Thread is a exquisite film of elevated aesthetics that drape over a scintillating story of tumultuous potential discord.  There is infinite richness within the despair, spun by Daniel Day-Lewis re-teaming with his There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson, as the fictional 1950s tailor of status.  Mundane in some moments and mysterious in others, the sum of the literal and figurative details within the stitches and seams of this film make it one of the year’s best.

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MOVIE REVIEW: All the Money in the World

Director Ridley Scott borrowed a torn recipe page from headline history with the intention of presenting a five-course narrative meal.  The executive chef had to change out a key dish at the last minute before plating only to arrive at an even better cinematic dining experience than one thought possible.  All the Money in the World delivers on the promise of scintillating and satisfying tension in every bite and one of the most delicious portions of big-screen villainy this year.

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STUDENT-FRIENDLY MOVIE REVIEW: Wonder

I do my best to write professional grade film criticism fit for a formal audience, becoming best friends with a thesaurus and using my big boy words.  By day, I'm an elementary school educator.  At work this year, I've been organizing a special field trip for 5th graders to see Wonder after they've been reading the novel all fall.  This second "student-friendly" movie review is for them and other younger readers.  Revised, this review scales down my review down from an 11.6 Flesch Kincaid readability level to a comfy 4.4 average.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Wonder

Wonder’s buoyant messages are the moving jolt of empathy this generation needs.  Even better, its literal and figurative precepts carry an inspiring weight worthy to last many generations more.  Directed by the good hands of Stephen Chbosky, Wonder is an instant classic, sure to become a new favorite, for its target audience and a winning (and rare) example of a film taking great care to do justice by the book it is based on.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Lady Bird

In her solo feature directorial debut, Greta Gerwig has stepped in and pushed this cinematic species tremendously forward with the dramedy Lady Bird.  The film destroys any notion of the “manic pixie dream girl” fakery.  Lady Bird is a cornucopia woven with striking candor and filled with delightful oxymorons artfully composed to challenge taboos and stereotypes. Let’s give each oxymoron a life lesson and a paragraph or two along the way.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Wonderstruck

Haynes’ Wonderstruck still evokes true and impassioned power.  The film strides within a sensitive middle ground of approachable and praiseworthy quaintness in addressing difficult youthful challenges and emotions.  The effect is a grown-up experience audiences can, and should, appreciate compared to the mindless popcorn fluff and weightless distractions studio shovel into the PG marketplace.  If a new definition could be created for the term “wonderstruck,” it would read “rapt attention.”

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SHORT FILM REVIEW: Not Yet

For a while now, I have long wondered how someone could bottle that signature Pixar-level lightness for dramatic heft and pour it into a live-action piece with the same welcome whimsy.  Pixar's animated feature films and shorts consistently have a special way with conveying humor within the most difficult emotions  I might have found the closest attempt yet in Chad Hamilton’s lovely short film Not Yet.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Loving Vincent

The filmmakers promised Loving Vincent to be nothing you’ve ever seen put to film and they were not lying.  The sheer artistry is miraculous where even folded shirts look as dramatic as emoting faces.  To call the biographical drama a work of art and astonishing technical achievement would be shameless understatements.  The best part of all is the massive wellspring of creativity was thankfully applied to an engaged narrative worthy of the artistry and the legend cast by Vincent Van Gogh

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Florida Project

The crucial emotional response The Florida Project demands of its viewers is empathy.  If you can’t find that, if you turn your nose, close your eyes, and refuse to accept that this kind of American lifestyle exists, you are missing the hard truths, the teachable moments, and the larger points being presented.  onvenient Hollywood endings don’t exist in the real life Baker’s film examines.  Applaud a film that dares to push that stark reality.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Lucky

In each winsome second, Lucky continuously unearths affecting ways of making cantankerous endearing.  With grizzled resolve and humor as dry as the desert he walks in, the late Harry Dean Stanton personifies the charm culled from the crotchety put on display in John Carroll Lynch’s straight-shooting film.  Far from any Grumpy Old Men folly and possessing a hidden heart twice the size of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, meet a lovable unlovable asshole that flourishes to galvanize unexpected wholesomeness from the prickliest of cacti.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Big Sick

By definition, a punchline is “the words at the end of a joke or story that make it funny or surprising.”  Superb comedians dream of finding good ones they can wrap a story around and always refining their material for the right comedic effect for their audiences.  The Big Sick can confidently boast a self-evident punchline that lasts for over two hours and never runs out of the funny or the surprising.

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