After what seems like forever, the last stretch of a very long awards season will finally come to an end. On March 15th, the Oscars will commence and we can finally put the heated races and made-up campaign controversies behind us. The 98th Academy Awards is really a tale of two films, One Battle
It's always a risk when you ask a performer to shoulder a film and carry it over the finish line. Sometimes it works, the star's sheer charisma is enough to override the glaring flaws. But often times, no matter how bright that star shines it can't outshine the weaknesses. Thus is the case with
I am such a sucker for films that make their setting a character. The kind where the city itself is so integral to the story it can't be made anywhere else. I also love a good 70s crime thriller, character-driven narratives packed with equal heart and thrills. Enter The Only Living Pickpocket in
Psychosexual horror comedy featuring tentacle sex and a satirical sledgehammer to therapy culture is a hard sell anywhere. For something like that to work, you've got to be all in on the vibes. If not, the whole thing crumbles and becomes an insufferable sit, the hyper stylized execution more
I've had stock in Julia Ducournau since her debut film Raw, and doubled down on that buy in with her follow up Titane. So naturally my excitement for her third outing Alpha could not be contained. An expert in body horror mixed with insightful ideas of grief and generational trauma, Ducournau has
In television, hospital shows are a dime a dozen. The rise of The Pitt, the unstoppable longevity of Grey's Anatomy, and a number other hospital-centric shows reveal no shortage of fascination with medicine and trauma. It's often rare in cinema unless its haunted wards or part of a protagonist's
The Apothecary Diaries has the cast finally begin to prepare for the incoming locust plague in Ep. 52 "The Last Volume". Sure, they could've prepared much sooner. However, without the intel gained in this episode, those preparations wouldn't have been nearly as guided as they are here. Now it's
For a film called All Of A Sudden, very little happens suddenly in Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s sensitive portrayal of friendship and care. The director (Drive My Car) has a particularly patient style of filmmaking that is not universally appealing, but it captures humanity in all its messy earnestness.
Sasaki and Peeps gives us plots galore being brewed up, as you might expect from Ep. 15 "Concealment and Infiltration" with that title. Complete with both the faking of a death and an undercover operation to investigate the death game faction. It's all great ingredients for some serious political
