By Thomas M. Puhr. The scariest thing in Huesera is not the ghostly bone woman, but the all-too-real fear that one may choose the wrong path when faced with one of life’s many forked roads.” Among a throng of worshippers, a young woman climbs the stone steps leading to a […]
Family Dynamics: Corey Deshon’s Daughter (2022)
By Jeremy Carr. It’s a pressure cooker scenario executed by debuting writer-director Corey Deshon with an acute tonal balance, and Vivien Ngô’s performance, in the title role, is the obvious catalyst for Daughter’s swift narrative momentum.” A young woman flees through a desolate landscape, pursued by two individuals. They’re first […]
Hell is Other People’s Kids: Roxanne Benjamin’s There’s Something Wrong with the Children (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. [While] the narrative structure proves flimsy…. it’s an admirable effort, and the film’s underlying commentary on parenthood separates Benjamin’s film from some of its lazier competitors.” Children often seem to exist in a world few adults can access. They develop their own sort of language: a […]
Adolescent Hell: Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s Beautiful Beings (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Different doesn’t always mean good, and while I admire the many risks Beautiful Beings takes, I walked away from it with a shrug of indifference.” Everyone at Balli’s school seems to have agreed he’s the designated punching bag. In class, the girl next to him skooches […]
Lost Time: Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Debuting filmmaker Charlotte Wells isn’t a promising new writer-director with an emerging voice; her voice is already there, crystal clear.” Time dilates when you’re on vacation. Days spent lounging at the pool and wandering around the hotel become pleasantly lethargic. You can almost trick yourself into […]
An Ardent Appreciation – Crooked, but Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges
A Book Review by Jeremy Carr. While Klawans routinely sings the praises of Sturges, he also expresses an evenhanded awareness of certain shortcomings, making this critical analysis from Columbia University Press a perceptive, exceptionally well-composed and earnest evaluation.” Lest there be any doubt about Stuart Klawans’s regard for the subject […]
No Escape – Fate in Film: A Deterministic Approach to Cinema
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Author Thomas M. Puhr concentrates on the cinematic narrative of predestination, our futile attempts to escape it, and our fear that, after all, forces greater than us direct both our internal lives and our interactions with our outside world. The book brilliantly argues that […]
Spoiler Alert: Bring a Few Hankies
By Elias Savada. Filled with keen observant and honest life revelations that warms the heart before the moments of despair, Spoiler Alert offers up a warming cup of hot cocoa in a tragicomic setting.” As terminal illness-driven comedy-dramas go, Spoiler Alert is a light, semi-sweet step up from any of […]
Unifying Chaos: What’s Up Connection
By Jeremy Carr. Nearly everyone encountered expresses some sort of erratic behavior, which does give the film a sense of genuine spontaneity and hysterical possibility.” There is a popular social media trend where someone posts a seemingly innocuous video in which something unexpected then occurs. This is usually accompanied by […]
Slashing Names Off that Naughty List: Tommy Wirkola’s Violent Night (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. The setup is little more than window dressing for a number of set pieces (some clever, others tedious) in which our hero kicks major ass, John McClane-style.” After about 1,000 years, even the most glamorous job loses some of its luster. Such is the experience of […]