On Career Longevity and Receiving a Retrospective – Julie Carmen comments
Who gets a retrospective? I argue that it’s not the loudest voice in the room but those aligned with movies that may still matter. Films that touched a universal truth or a tender bruise, films that broke the norm, films that made the art form veer are films that stick in the collective unconscious and get retrospectives. They lift us out of the mundane like an existential sermon. Dialogue, glances, unique situations resonate throughout the years with the repetition compulsion of an unresolved dream. Those are the films that stay alive on grainy youtube for forty years and are popping up as 4K restorations theatrically and on Bluray. Because true cinephiles preserved arthouse cinemas, the theatrical experience is back in vogue, becoming all the rave again.
Read MoreROOMMATES – Review by Walker Conger
Even if you had a wonderful freshman year roommate, I’m sure the “what-if” questions have crossed your mind as you’re settling into your new shared space. “What if we have nothing in common?” “What if they take my stuff?” “What if they expose my secrets?” “What if they set my things on fire?” In Chandler Levack’s Roommates, you will see all of these “what-ifs” play out in wildly unexpected ways.
Read MoreSOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN – Review by Abby Perkins
Are you sure he’s the one? Before you walk down that aisle, make sure you know the answer – the wrong choice could be your doom. Through eight episodes of unexpected twists and gory surprises, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen leaves you leaping for that next episode button. It’s original and clever, while also taking inspiration from what works in horror – relying on atmospheric creepiness without the overuse of jump scares, found footage, through-the-lens point-of-view, and an unanticipated betrayal that shakes everything up. The success of the show lies in its ability to remain engaging even when the hide-behind-the-blanket moments take the backseat.
Read MoreJULIE & JULIA – Review by Walker Conger
The story of Julie & Julia comes from two different, yet connected, memoirs: My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme, and Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell. The film goes back and forth between 1950s Paris, where Julia Child (Meryl Streep) studies at Le Cordon Bleu and ultimately works on a French cookbook for American women, and 2002 New York, when Julie Powell (Amy Adams) starts a blog about cooking all of those 524 recipes in the span of one year in her small apartment. Both performances are wonderful, but Streep truly becomes Julia Child – it’s easy to forget that you’re watching a performance and not the actual Julia Child roaming around France.
Read MoreROOSTER – Review by Abby Perkins
Parents are supposed to help their children through all of life’s struggles, especially the struggles they’ve been through themselves. However, what do you do when your child faces their biggest obstacle but you have no advice for them, since you aren’t close to getting over the same obstacle you’ve faced yourself? Rooster follows beach-read author Greg Russo(Steve Carrell), who is spending time at his alma mater after Katie, his daughter and a professor at the college, is left by her grad-student-banging husband. The HBO series’ pilot, shows a father and daughter, riddled with their own insecurities and personal issues, realizing that they are both hot messes. Rooster reminds us that everyone is living life for the first time.
Read MoreTHE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY – Review by Walker Conger
When Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) first plays the piano while wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket, there’s no way to expect what a thrilling ride director Anthony Minghella will take you on in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, this underrated entry of Damon’s filmography captures the beautiful Italian scenery of small, tight-knit towns and the expansiveness of Rome and Venice. With the use of jazz throughout the score, the film paints a picture of a carefree, “la dolce vita” post-war lifestyle that is enticing to a struggling New York restroom attendant like Tom Ripley.
Read MoreLOVE STORY: JOHN F. KENNEDY JR. AND CAROLYN BESSETTE – Review by Abby Perkins
Spanning over seven years, Love Story follows John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) from their first meeting to the day they tragically lost their lives. Kelly has come out of nowhere, quickly making a name for himself with an emotionally grounded performance and electrifying chemistry with Pidgeon – you may recognize her from last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot and her Tony-nominated performance in Stereophonic in 2024.
Read MorePEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION – Review by Walker Conger
Are rom coms back? Did they ever really go anywhere? Whatever you may think about the state of the romantic comedy film, this adaptation of Emily Henry’s popular novel, People We Meet on Vacation, is a heartfelt, funny, and summery adventure reminiscent of the classics we know and love.
Read MoreDROP DEAD CITY: NYC in Film During the 1970s – Commentary by Yael Friedman (Guest post)
Fifty years ago, New York City famously found itself at the precipice: of bankruptcy; of crumbling infrastructure, with hollowed out buildings and empty lots that gave a visual language to the city’s many woes. This disfigured urban landscape seemed to both bear witness to and play a central role in the city’s fading fortunes, its ebbing safety nets and rise in crime, its white flight and arson epidemic, the ravages of the municipal workforce and tax base, and the anger and indignation that spilled over from every open window and overflowing trash can. The wonderful recent documentary Drop Dead City by Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost about the 1975 fiscal crisis is a fittingly dramatic retelling of this pivotal moment in the city’s history. It is, of course, titled after the famous Daily News headline from when President Gerald R. Ford allegedly told the city to “drop dead,” after Mayor Abe Beame and Governor Hugh Carey arrived in Washington, hats in hand, asking for federal aid.
Read MoreSIRAT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)
Literal and metaphorical guardrails suddenly evaporating, we are plunged into the reality that the end of the world is not waiting to announce itself. Sirat follows a charming motley crew of nomadic Europeans ravers, somewhere in southern Morocco. A party in a desert fills up the screen with this moonscape beset by electronic beats, basslines, dancing bodies in various states of rejection of polite society. We are totally immersed, easily led into this pilgrimage, ready to hand ourselves over to this camaraderie, to feeling fully embodied in dance and drugs, the rest of the world melting away. The beautiful and unrelenting score, by Kanding Ray, never lets you unhook.
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