I believe that Zappa (this doc) is unique in a big way that has nothing to do with Zappa. It felt like an appetizer that fills you up. Like a summary with an arch. It touches spots and moves on without dramatizing them but you totally understand the complexities that are natural to any relationship. Not dramatizing everything out was ingenious because that would have made the doc a bit cliched. I became aware of this when they started talking…

Major work in a deceptively conventional form, fronted by immersion into an underrepresented culture, backloaded with a ferocious courtroom drama. As usual, McQueen trains the camera on carefully chosen faces and spaces—most of his films would work as silent cinema—and never turns it away from rage and despair. There’s a lingering shot of a quivering colander that’s fallen after a raid; it’s heavy-handed and no less effective: A country is trying to strain the refuse from its stew. 

On second…

Happiest Season is hands down one of my favorite Christmas movies in recent memory, maybe even of all time. Not only is it absolutely hilarious but I had a smile on my face from ear to ear throughout the entire movie.

Dan Levy and Mary Holland are comedic scene stealers every time they’re on screen, but that doesn’t at all take away from the great lead performances turned in by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. All of these brought to life…

I don’t think I can remember a time where I didn’t hear it.

The ringing.

The noise nobody but me could seem to hear. I couldn’t stand it. I had no idea what it was at first, but it was loud, and it was getting louder. I told myself it would just go away, but even back then I don’t think I believed myself.

When I was nine it got worse, I was having hearing problems, so I told my…

‘I want you all to panic’

Though the documentary on the surface feels remarkably by-the-numbers in terms of filmmaking in style at first, as the movie goes on you see how access and style come together to create a brilliantly human look at Greta’s life both in and out of her vitally-important climate activism.

What this film does in capturing the person, the 15-16 year old teenager at the heart of this film, is put us in her shoes. It’s…

David Fincher's MANK (2020) is Fincher doing something entirely new we've never seen from the neurotic director before. While every camera angle, blocking, frame and actor movement is still very stringent and in control, and every written line rolls off the tongue in rapid remarks, as we have come to expect from the filmmaker, MANK showcases a new side of Fincher. A mellow, laid-back attitude towards filmmaking and storytelling that rather compares to the wits of the Coen Brothers rather…