“The Greasy Strangler” Descends into Depravity with the Ease of a Cult Classic

The Greasy Strangler might be what it feels like to go mad.  The film is best described as a kind of John Waters fever dream (or maybe wet dream), that combines a penchant for bizarre sexuality with a tongue-in-cheek slasher film.  The acting is purposely hammy, and each kill more absurd than the last.  There are sequences that physically made me ill, and others that left me utterly befuddled. You can call it weird, disgusting, senseless, or even a fucking embarrassment of a film – but you can’t call it derivative or boring.

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Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation” Seeks a Spiritual Deliverance from Racial Injustice

Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation is a remarkable piece of cinema, especially from a first-timer.  Parker controls this entire endeavor as writer, director, producer, and also stars as the slave Nat Turner.  This is a powerful but sad film, though there is a kernel of hope at its center that Parker tries to work from.  Based on a the real-life slave revolt led by Nat Turner in the early 1830s, the film offers incredible acting, but suffers slightly from narrative issues and some muddled thematic material.  Of course, Parker takes some poetic license with the actual history, and while some of these help the story, others are more egregious and unnecessary.  The most definitive aspect of the film is its profound spirituality, which Parker leans heavily on for dramatic justification of Turner’s rebellion, and also as the source of his leadership.  Indeed, this is a film about not only racial injustice, but spiritual deliverance.  Parker is sometimes lost with exactly where to focus the rebellious spirit, but these small mistakes cannot mar the overall poignancy of his message.

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State of the Blog – October 2016

Autumn is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it comes sweater weather, pumpkin-spiced everything, and Oscar contenders.  While I was a little harsh on the cinematic offerings of September, I was pleasantly surprised by most of what I saw last month, both at home and in the theater.  I also began a new writing venture, which you should see reflected on this site soon.  And, my readership seems to be increasing with each month, to boot!  To make matters even better, October is stocked with an outstanding array of films, from high-dollar Hollywood fares all the way down to some of the most widely-regarded and weird indies out there.  Let’s get into it.

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Toronto International Film Festival Reviews

Hey all!  I was fortunate to get a few screeners for some films at the Toronto International Film Festival, courtesy of Courtney Small over at CinemaAxis.com.  Here I collect the four reviews and offer a little blurb about the films, including just how much I recommend each one (spoiler alert:  I liked all the films, but some more than others).

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All Aboard the Elle Fanning Hype Train

Elle Fanning isn’t exactly a new kid on the block.  In fact, her first film was a full 15 years ago, when she was the two-year-old version of Lucy Diamond Dawson in I am Sam.  Since then, Fanning has often portrayed younger versions of her older sister Dakota, but her filmography extends well beyond playing second-fiddle.  Her breakout role was likely her turn as Alice Dainard in J.J. Abram’s Super 8, which I enjoyed just fine.  But, it is her most recent work that augurs greatness.  Maleficent was a strong performance, and she also managed to be the second best actor in Trumbo, behind the Oscar-nominated Bryan Cranston.  Then there was The Neon Demon.  After gushing about this film, I decided to look more closely at the career of Fanning, and I was surprised to find her starring in seven films between now and the end of 2017!

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State of the Blog – September 2016

Speaking generally (which never upsets anyone, ever), September is the month when the studios start to release their Oscar darlings.  Then, in a counter-programming move, you can find some bigger films, genre flicks, or other stuff that will impress the crowds that simply aren’t concerned with the Oscar-bait.  This September is no different, but it strikes me as odd that the films being released this year are much less interesting than we are used to.  So, for this State of the Blog, I’ll likely just complain a bit about the flicks, try to find something that I think will end up being cool, and then I’ll also talk about a few flicks that I would like to see.

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“Trumbo” Showcases the Talents of Cranston and Fanning, but Feels Beyond Its Length

Trumbo, from veteran comedy director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents and Austin Powers series), is based on the true story of the blacklisted screenwriter during an era of anti-Communism.  In an academy-award nominated performance, Bryan Cranston portrays the eponymous writer throughout the late 1940s and 1950s during a time when the “Red Scare” permeated Hollywood.   Though the film feels overlong due to some meandering subplots, and a few of the characters distract from the overall story, this is a solid historical drama.  Cranston is undoubtedly the major attraction, but the overall themes of the story remain poignant to this day.

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“The Lobster”: A Sardonic Defense of Romantic Choice

The very best satire establishes absurdity as commonplace, and Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ first English-language feature film The Lobster is a fascinating example.  Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, this dark romantic comedy imagines a dystopia where single people are sent to a hotel and given 45 days to find a new partner.  Should they fail, they are transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into the wild.  Some attendees don’t wait that long, and escape into the bordering forest to live in a kind of fugitive singleness.  The Lobster viciously jests through this dichotomy, exploring the nature of relationships and how societal pressures can paradoxically be the cause of both settling and celibacy.

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Hot Docs Coverage on CinemaAxis

Greetings readers!  I am going to post a quick blog-related post to remind my readers that CinemaAxis.com has started its coverage of the Hot Docs film festival – a festival based in Toronto that focuses on documentaries.  In this month’s State of the Blog post, I mentioned that I was lucky  enough to review three of these documentaries.  In fact, I was offered two additional films, so I ended up with five documentaries to review.  Below I will tell you the films that I got to see, the day the review will be posted on CinemaAxis, and a short synopsis of the flick to whet your appetite.  Here we go!

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Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is a Coming-of-Age Farce with Genuine Heart

Wisconsin Film Festival Opening Night

New Zealand director Taika Waititi  has created a magnificently funny coming-of-age film in Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  Most known for the HBO series Flight of the Conchords and the mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, Waititi has also directed more standard narrative-based films like Boy and Eagle vs. SharkHunt for the Wilderpeople falls in this category, as it tells the story of an orphan named Ricky being introduced to a new foster family on the edge of the New Zealand bush.

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