“Come and get your love!” Oh, hey there. Welcome to the To Infinity Retrospective. “Come and get your love!” A series created in preparation for Rise Of Skywalker. Each month, I review a different Space Opera, and, this time, we’re returning to the world of films that people have actually seen with Guardians of the Galaxy. What’s it about? Well… Continue reading
We’ve all seen movies that advertise themselves as “based on a true story.” But what happens when someone actually believes that claim? Kumiko, a friendless, unmarried office worker in Tokyo, has convinced herself that the Coen Brothers film Fargo, wherein a criminal buries a suitcase full of money in the North Dakota snow, is real. So much so that she steals her boss’s credit card, abandons her apartment and pet rabbit, and journeys to the US to find the “treasure.” She barely speaks English, and has no real plan of how to find the fictional loot. But she’s determined, and won’t let anything, be it the cold, or the fact that the treasure isn’t real, stop her. What will happen? Watch the movie to find out. Continue reading
While driving to his mother’s funeral, corrupt Detective Geon-Soo Ko accidentally kills a man when the latter stumbles out into the road. Fearing murder charges on top of an Internal Affairs investigation, Ko disposes of the body by stuffing the corpse in his mother’s coffin. But when he starts getting threatening phone calls from a man who claims he knows what he did, Ko finds himself pulled into a much bigger, much weirder conspiracy. Continue reading
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” This quote from William Tecumsah Sherman is what opens The Keeping Room, a contained, period-piece thriller that came out just last year. It also seems to be the film’s motto, since the movie is cruel, and it definitely leaves you wishing it were over sooner. Continue reading
Hey kids, did you know that, once upon a time, people actually cared about chess? No, I’m not shitting you! Back in the 1970s, when America was determined to beat the Soviets at everything, there was a real surge in chess’s popularity. That was because a young man named Bobby Fischer managed to beat the Russian Grand Master, Boris Spassky, and, in so doing, gave the American people something to brag about. The story of how he did this, as well as how he coped with his inner demons, is what is told in Pawn Sacrifice, the latest film from director Edward Zwick, and star Tobey Maguire. And it’s terrible. Yeah. I wish I could be more subtle, more nuanced, but that’s the fact of the matter. It’s terrible. Continue reading
If Spike Lee and Wes Anderson had a baby, and that baby grew up and decided to make a movie incorporating both its daddies’ visual styles and political views, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect with Justin Simien’s Dear White People. Yes indeed! In addition to explorations and indictments of racism, this movie has a very quirky, colorful, off-beat aesthetic. Perfectly symmetrical shots, sets with pastel color schemes, whip pans–these are some visual tricks featured in Dear White People that you might expect to find in, say, Moonrise Kingdom, or the Grand Budapest Hotel. And while these techniques are perfectly fine, and work in those latter films, which are intentionally weird and silly, they don’t necessarily lend themselves to a discussion of race relations on a college campus. And that, loved ones, is just one reason why I didn’t much care for Dear White People. There are others, to be sure, but I’ll get to those in a minute. Continue reading
The best way for me to describe Ex Machina is, what Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory would look like if Ridley Scott directed it. That might sound like a silly description, until you learn the film’s premise. A mysterious billionaire lives out where no one can get to him, he holds a lottery to give a person the chance to come visit his house, the person does so, and then crazy shit happens. Seriously, throw in some dancing orange dwarves and you’ve got the same film. Continue reading
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