Film diary

Donald James Parker has written no fewer than 18 evangelical Christian feature films since 2013, and he starred in most of them as well, including Gramps Goes to College. They say you should write about what you know, and Parker’s main character in this film—a retired computer programmer who played tennis as an undergrad and moves from South Dakota to Tennessee—is pulled directly from Parker’s own bio. Conspicuously fictional is the part where he goes… See more →

What a relief that this is not the uplifting sports drama it’s being sold as, but rather a properly stressful Safdie movie full of terrible people. Also, I’m not sure why every single pair of eyeglasses in this film is exquisite, but I’m all for it.

I decided to close out Christmas with the most sacrilegious thing within reach, but for all its cheekily provocative preoccupation with lust and power, Benedetta’s satire and sleaze are largely drowned out by a tedious veneer of prestige melodrama.

Massachusetts, I can’t say I miss ya.

I didn’t have much access to TV during the heyday of To Catch a Predator, and while I was aware of the show, I don’t remember giving it much thought. I can’t say that anymore, thanks to this pensive documentary examining the show’s legacy, and I’m not surprised to learn I don’t find ritual humiliation masquerading as journalism to be entertaining or informative, regardless of who is being humiliated.

I’ve always been amazed Twin Peaks ever made it to air on network television in 1990, and its 2017 return, perhaps David Lynch’s most unfiltered vision, upped the ante on that amazement considerably, even in the streaming age of pricey prestige dramas. Has there ever been a creative work this vast and this weird with a production budget this big? Whatever you think of Lynch’s work, you have to admire his ability to carve out… See more →

This undoubtedly would have fared better in a packed theater than it did with me watching it alone at home, but I was pleasantly surprised it made me laugh out loud several times. Inevitably, its comedy feels conspicuously out of time, and I don’t think it’s on the level of the original, but I’m also not 12 years old anymore, and that’s not its fault. I spotted a couple very subtle sight gags, and I’m… See more →

My unexcused absence from social media kept me from finding out about the first-ever Philly Animation Festival until just a few days before it started, but luckily that was enough time for me to get a festival pass and make plans to attend every screening except the one for kids. In keeping with my Ottawa tradition, I rated and wrote at least a sentence or two about every single film I saw. Watching and reviewing… See more →

Relentlessly grimy from start to (almost) finish, teeming with hardboiled lowlifes of every flavor, and plenty of location shooting that makes for a great little Brooklyn time capsule.

Among other things, I remain very appreciative of Lanthimos’s rare appetite for adventurous typography.

Maybe the best thing you can say for The Forever Purge, which was originally slated for release in July of 2020, is that it cleverly predicts January 6th, at least until you remember that the loudest man on the planet had a global captive audience that year, not limited to his devoted cult of wackos, and anyone with half a brain cell could read the tea leaves.

In perhaps the series’s most ham-fisted attempt at… See more →

Like the other films in the franchise, The First Purge’s clear polemical ambitions are paved over by commercial ones. But this one’s blaxploitation revival is a bigger missed opportunity, because it might have really had something to say.

At the top, a montage of TV news talking heads gives us a cursory history of the rise of the New Founding Fathers of America, an autocratic political party whose introduction of the Purge, an annual… See more →

I’m not having a good month, and these Purge movies are not helping. But will I stop watching them? Apparently I will not.

There’s a MacGuffin this time, an anti-Purge senator (Elizabeth Mitchell) whose presidential bid aims to upend the barbaric status quo, which of course makes her a target. After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, she flees her home, and it just so happens the head of her security detail is Leo Barnes (Frank… See more →

I couldn’t find any indication that Jello Biafra was offered a cameo in The Purge: Anarchy, which seems like an injustice given that it’s essentially a film adaptation of Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor,” albeit an adaptation whose 104-minute runtime is markedly less incisive than what the DK song manages to say in a mere 180 seconds.

Still, Anarchy is an unqualified improvement over the first Purge film, whose one-note home-invasion plot Anarchy upgrades to… See more →

I was once again unable to make it to the animation festival in Ottawa this year, and the Philadelphia Film Festival once again filled some of that gap with a well-curated program of shorts. I’m feeling pretty raw lately about a variety of big things both personal and global, and several of these films collectively poked at all those things, so while I don’t regret attending, I did come away from the screening more emotionally… See more →

In keeping with this year’s ad hoc and mostly lowbrow Robtober, and since most of the Purge movies are available on streaming services I currently have access to, I’m reluctantly giving them a go. I didn’t hate this one any less than the first time I saw it; it’s perhaps the low-water mark of boneheaded Blumhouse mediocrity, with a kindergarten-level attempt at social commentary, cut-rate cinematography, and the most irritating villain this side of Martin… See more →