Posts in Video on Demand
MOVIE REVIEW: Krystal

Fashioning itself as a coming-of-age dramedy, Krystal scratches out frank dialogue emoting on behalf of overly honest hearts.  It banks on mixing sentiment built on pleasantries laced with profanity. All kinds of abrupt dysfunction and daffy discombobulation try to be endearing entanglements for entertainment, but the result is a really uneven piece of batty humor and grating romance

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COLUMN: Sofy.tv emerges as an amazing new platform for short films

Every Movie Has a Lesson has gradually become more and more of an advocate and proponent of the buried treasure that is the short film scene.  I'm excited to share this report of a promising new hub named Softy.tv for audiences to experience and enjoy more from this branch of the film medium. Enjoy and learn up on this great viewing opportunity!

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SHORT FILM REVIEW: The Prince

n concisely thematic way, the award-winning short film The Prince, written and directed by Kyra Zagorsky, is a moving artistic interpretation of one of those such moments.  It indeed has a thought-provoking story to tell, and the result creates a resonating effect in short order, the chief goal of a good short film.  The Prince’s key to accomplishing its depth is the twin layers it uses to portray and describe its moment.

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MOVIE REVIEW: 1945

The end of a large war is always a turning point that trickles down from the front lines and the soldiers at arms to the home front with those that maintained their respective communities when their fighters were away.  Wars benefit some community members while tragically redefining others. 1945 is a small and intense microcosm of that dichotomy demonstrated over the course of one fateful day in the aftermath of World War II.  Shot in bracing black-and-white, this film exudes strong themes of guilt across several points of view.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Cold War

In Cold War, Jon and Maggie’s misery is our delight and played for side-splitting laughs.  The level of vomit in the film is as voluminous as the dark humor. This comedy is the brainchild of writer J. Wilder Konschak making his feature-length screenplay and co-directing debut with Stirling MacLaughlin.  His created scenarios and pitfalls are bracingly honest for both their entertaining embarrassment and sinister believability.

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MOVIE REVIEW: I Kill Giants

For the YA film demographic, I would trade the dozens of run-of-the-mill repetitive and mindless roller coaster rides for more stories and movies that engage and matter like I Kill Giants.  Following in the footsteps of the likes of Pete’s Dragon and A Monster Calls in recent years, we have a more adult fairy tale that is not shy about heavy themes and strong emotions and enlightens them with a level of imagination that is fragile and brutal with its beauty at the same time. 

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MOVIE REVIEW: Mohawk

Their maddening pursuit for prisoners takes the opponents into a rustic valley of Mohawk turf with a river bordering one side and the full war on the other.   One by one, grizzly deaths dwindle numbers on both sides until the prophetic zinger line of “we’re the only monsters left out here” brings forth another plane of peril.  The aggressive hunt turns ethereal and truly primal towards a crackling climax of mist and fire.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Journey's End

Journey’s End recounts the British side of a climactic four-day span from March 18-21, 1918 in the stalemate “No Man’s Land” trenches of Aisne in northern France in the lead-up to Operation Michael.  Every month, each British company is required to serve six days on the front line where casualties are gravely high. Gambling with death sentences, both trooper and officer alike pray that their six days are not the ones where an offensive is being amassed or defended.  

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MOVIE REVIEW: Flower

Though measured as a small independent film, Flower is an undoubted showcase platform for the soaring talent of Zooey Deutch.  Clad in her plain tank-tops and empowering a character with all kinds of obscene confidence, not even the worst behaviors on display can take away the magnetism of her frank and jarring performance.  For most of the film, she shines repulsiveness with unmatched charisma.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Submission

Stanley Tucci is a cinematic treasure of sarcasm.  What that man can shell out in a throwaway line, a raised eyebrow, or a pause of bated breath is on another level to most of his peers and contemporaries.  When Stanley cranks that mockery up with profanity, it only gets sharper. It would take quite the rug pull to disrupt that man’s mojo. Tucci meets that tumultuous turmoil in Submission

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Death of Stalin

Hot damn, you know your satire is magma-level hot when you offend the powers-that-be of a country enough to ban your film from playing on their soil.  Labeled as “extremist” and a “provocation” enough to spark tabloid headlines like “the film Hitler could have made,” Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin wears a giant badge of pride next to a tiny medallion of shame on its cinematic uniform on being banned in four nations: Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.

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MEDIA APPEARANCE: Guest on "E-Man's Movie Reviews" podcast for "Justice League"

Emmanuel Noisette of the newly updated E-Man's Movie Reviews called for a wingman on a team-up movie.  He was kind enough to invite me to represent Every Movie Has a Lesson on  a recorded SPOILER-FILLED podcast of our immediate reactions after watching the Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon concoction of Justice League.  We sit down and discuss what we saw, what we liked, and didn't like.

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