Problemista! A movie that delivered on all the chaotic whimsy I fell in love with from the trailer, but surprised me in so many ways. A hilarious and necessarily honest depiction of the US immigrant experience as death by a thousand needless, counterintuitive paper cuts, but Julio Torres threads it into something so insistently optimistic through Alejandro’s relationship with Tilda Swinton’s Elizabeth. Two people who couldn’t be more different, but might only be truly understood by each other. Two little…
Reviews tagged ‘a24’ by Sydney🚀 Patron
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Civil War 2024
The good news is that Civil War is not the heavy-handed right vs. left eye roller that the trailers might have made it seem like. Actually, Garland has almost completely abstained from political specifics and instead made a Heart of Darkness-type road trip film through the lens of war photographers as they travel from New York to DC in a war-torn America. I love this idea and the conversation about the impact of an image, desensitization, to what lengths the…
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Y2K 2024
Kyle Mooney asks us what if the Y2K bug became an existential threat in a balls-to-the-wall nostalgic comedy that’s like This is the End as a feature length SNL sketch. Better when it’s the latter (I’m talking SNL when it was good), I’ll always take a Hacker Man bit but I’m not sure I ultimately got that much out of it. Certainly lots of blasts from the past for people born before 2000. Rachel Zegler I love you but you definitely know what an iPhone is.
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Love Lies Bleeding 2024
Yeah Love Lies Bleeding fucking rules, a pulsating queer thriller jacked up on sex, flesh, metal and poison. Something very Cronenbergian and classic going on here, but after Saint Maud Rose Glass also continues to play with genre and subvert our expectations in the best way. This is easily one of Kristen Stewart’s strongest performances but it’s Katy O’Brian who threatens to steal the show in a force of nature breakout role. The ending will really throw you for a loop.
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I Saw the TV Glow 2024
Anyways, this shit is major. Demands to be digested over multiple viewings but you don’t need to dissect everything to conclude I Saw the TV Glow is probably a masterpiece. Look at any frame of this and all you see is Jane Schoenbrun - a surreal expression of being queer in the age of evolving media consumption and how it can both liberate and detrimentally intoxicate. Some moments that are absolutely horrific, some that will break your heart into a million…
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The Iron Claw 2023
I saw this how many days ago and still haven’t shaken the feeling of discovering the tragedy of this story, and then discovering there was more, and more. Fuck. An all-American cautionary tale and indictment of shitty parents. The artifice of wrestling makes it one of the coolest sports to explore cinematically, and Sean Durkin fully understands that here. Absolutely electric stuff. Zac Efron it’s only the beginning babe
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Priscilla 2023
I admittedly wanted more of karate-era Priscilla and to marinate in certain moments much longer despite the intentional dreamlike fragmentation, but there are unsurprisingly so many subtle & smart ways that Coppola brings us into the loneliness, the control, a predatory relationship with passion but no justice. Cailee Spaeny is out of this world and moves this character through different ages and painful experiences with palpable grace. A beautiful cage is still a cage.
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Talk to Me 2022
Original, mean, stylish, consistent. Funny! Been a while since I’ve been this disturbed in the theater. Only thing that rivals recently is Terrifier 2! Give the Philippou brothers a blank check. Hell yeah.
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Past Lives 2023
Celine Song’s directorial debut brings as much blistering sadness as it does comfort and resolve as she sets out to reconcile ‘what is’, ‘what was’ and ‘what if’. What if we’re faced with a past version of ourselves that we don’t identify with anymore? Would I be happier if things had gone differently? Over 20 years Past Lives makes its way towards accepting that change does not make ‘what was’ less meaningful, but it can still be mourned. I especially…
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Sharper 2023
Sebastian Stan is in his Patrick Bateman era. This is mostly just unremarkable and not nearly sexy enough, but there are some decent performances and I have to admit I was bamboozled a couple times. Caron’s visuals and the score also feel very Michael Mann-inspired which is cool. Just not feeling the 3 for this one but it was a fine watch.
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Aftersun 2022
You never really shake that feeling of seeing darkness in your parents that you don’t understand yet. The sudden realization that holes are being poked in your perfect image of them, and you don’t know whether to resent them or pity them or all of the above. I don’t like to get very personal with reviews but it’s hard to separate my thoughts on Aftersun from my own experiences, and it’s worth mentioning that I’ve probably never felt so acutely…
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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 2021
I saw this like months ago at IFF Boston (Q+A with Jenny Slate!) and haven’t logged it for whatever reason - it’s cute! I was a huge fan of the YouTube sketch growing up. Slate + Fleischer-Camp gracefully translated it to feature length without losing any of its novelty or the wry wit that makes Marcel so great. They even kept some of the same jokes. I might just not be a very sentimental person, but I wasn’t as overwhelmingly…