The Aqua-Man

December 24, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by James Wan
Running time: 2 hours and 23 minutes loooonnnngggggggg
MPAA rating: PG-13 for some superhero horseshit, language, and sea monsters

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Aquaman? That’s where we’re at, huh? Between this and the Deadpool Christmas stunt© and the fake, not-actually-happening Joker movie, it’s increasingly clear that we’ve kind of done all we can do with all this superhero shit. James Wan thinks so, too. How else to explain the fact that his biggest and most direct inspiration for his Aquaman movie seems to be the Star Wars prequels?

Shoplifters

December 03, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring Lily Franky, Sakura Andô and Mayu Matsuka
Running time 2 hours and 1 minute
MPAA rating: R for some sexual content and nudity

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

So many films are about families, or at least say they are. Everything from romantic comedies to the MCU to horror to whatever nonsense animated children’s fantasy is terrorizing theaters on any given week. But too often, the theme seems to be that no matter what, the family you were born into will always be there for you. There is no stronger bond, most cinema wants to argue, than blood. Once in a while, though, we get something a little more interesting. Shoplifters is about family, but it also more specifically leans into the messier side of what it means to belong to something.

The Moviejawn History of Universal Horror, Part Five

November 01, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Part Five: I Want To Take His Brain…Out!

I’d say the estates of Curt Siodmak and Clarence Upson Young have a definite case against Jordan Peele. They need to get on this, cause if they think no one’s ever gonna notice that he straight-up ripped off Black Friday and The Strange Case of Doctor Rx then I’m here to set them on the right path. I noticed!

The Moviejawn History of Universal Horror, Part Four

October 20, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Part Four: The Mummy Eternally Returns

For whatever reason, the Christopher Nolan Batman films keep popping up in my orbit recently. Cab drivers asking me if I like them, writers online prematurely comparing Phoenix to Ledger, my YouTube recommendations shoving analysis videos at me. But it’s got me thinking about the thing that always bugged me the most about them. Taken as a whole, the overarching premise kind of makes no sense, in that the progression of Begins to Dark Knight to Rises covers the span of about nine years wherein Bruce Wayne was dressing up and fighting crime as Batman for about…what, two weeks? The time compression of the storytelling is a little much, is what I’m saying. None of it adds up. But it’s not the first film series to get wonky with its timeline. If you’ve seen the Universal Mummy movies, you know what I’m talking about.

Can't Care - Week of September 25, 2018

September 24, 2018 by Guest User in can't care, francis friel, rosalie kicks

Heyyyyy you guyssssss! Can’t Care is B-A-C-K-K-K-K-K! Did you miss us? BUT DID YOU MISS US? We think you did. This week’s addition throws shade at Hollywood’s latest reformations of the Joker and Chucky. Please to enjoy.

The Moviejawn History of Universal Horror, Part Three

September 12, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Part Three: The Tom Coward Memorial Edition

You’re just expected to know everything, aren’t you? You’re expected to have already seen every movie. To know every piece of background info on all your favorite films. You’re supposed to be an expert. It’s not okay to not have seen something. It’s disheartening, to say the least. It’s a technique used to stymie film lovers and film writers and to convince them they aren’t good enough, aren’t worthy of being in The Club.

The Moviejawn History of Universal Horror, Part Two

September 05, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, Universal Horror History

By Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Part Two: The Fangs Come Out

A while back a friend of mine had the chance to go see Patti Smith give a talk, or read from a book or whatever it is that she does these days. Maybe she played music? Maybe it was on Easter and she played that song about Easter? I forget, but the most important part (for me anyway) was when he said she gave the following advice: Take care of your teeth. Take care of your teeth! You go see Patti Smith. Your hero. This person with a lifetime of experience and wisdom and trials and this and that and what’s her grand take on everything? Take care of your teeth. FUCK.

The Moviejawn History of Universal Horror

August 29, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, Universal Horror History

By Francis X. Friel, The Projectionist

Part One: The Silent Era

I’ve loved silent movies and Universal monsters since I was little. Growing up in Philly in the early and mid-80s, every Saturday morning I’d get up at around 5am and run downstairs to watch TV. There would always been some weird old movies on, or, even better, reruns of Fractured Flickers. I’d see the clips and iconic images from so many classic silent films before I’d ever see the whole movies, and those became burned into my brain and are still with me today.

Nico, 1988

August 27, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Written and Directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli
Starring Trine Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair, and Anamaria Marinca
Running time: 1 hour and 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for drug use, language, and some sexuality

By Francis Friel, the Projectionist

Susanna Nicchiarelli has a lot on her mind in Nico, 1988. It’s almost as if the pure, abstract concepts of loneliness, bitterness, and addiction are manifesting on screen even before we get into the day-to-day reality of what it was like to be Christa Päffgen (known to those who don’t know her as Nico, a name she tolerates more than approves of) in the last few years of her life. But once she does show us more than a passing glimpse of the highs and lows of that life, those three traits are joined by another: inspiration.

Never Goin' Back: Does all that Teenage Wasteland Stuff Better Than Most

August 14, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Augustine Frizzell
Starring Maia Mitchell, Camila Morrone, Kyle Mooney
Running time: 1 hours 25 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

By Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Augustine Frizzell’s Never Goin’ Back is the sweatiest, shittiest, dopiest, most rambling new hangout movie of the year. And I mean sweaty and shitty as in - yeah, this movie has a lot of sweaty people in it and they talk a lot about shit. And shitting. And they are all pretty fuckin’ dopey.

True Faith, or: I Never Thought Much About It And Now I’m Thinking About It All The Time - Spike Lee’s BLACKkKLANSMAN Is The Best Film of The Year

August 10, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Spike Lee
Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, including racial epithets, and for disturbing/violent material and some sexual references

By Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Spike Lee is one of the few remaining living legends who still thinks of his own cinema in terms of great shots. I guarantee that, at 61 years of age, the Master still has camera setups and dolly and crane ideas he’s been waiting to spring his entire life but that he’ll never realize. He lives and breathes movies like no one else. Look at the recent output from others of his generation and you won’t find a single sequence as simple or as powerful as the early goings of BlacKkKlansman, where a meeting of the Colorado Springs Black Student Union transforms into a ritualistic, almost holy presentation of black faces, their features emerging from darkness as crisply and elegantly as if they were floating out of a Rembrandt painting.

Long Live the King

August 01, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, trailer review

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

They’re rebooting Charlie’s Angels. It’s weird that we’re at the point where studios are cycling back to the same weird and tired properties that no one asked for the first (second) time. It’s like they got sick of the stories about how any good spy script would inevitably get grafted into the Bond franchise and just decided “Fuck it, let’s call it what it is.” Do we need more Charlie’s Angels? Do we need more movies that are gonna cost millions and millions of dollars that’ll then open to horrible reviews and an indifferent audience? That thing’s gonna open in February because, all Deadpools aside, it’s still the only time of year (outside of August, strangely) when they can sneak the stinkers past us and won’t catch too much shit for it.

FUCK YOUR PURGE

July 07, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Everybody Should Have To Work Customer Service Or Get The Fuck Out Of My Theater, Also Some Thoughts About Marvel’s Ant-Man And The Wasp

By Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Fuck your Purge. Know what happens when new Purge movies come out? Movie theater employees across the country brace themselves. They know what’s coming.

Jurassic Jawn: Attack of the Clones

June 22, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by JA Bayona (2018)
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Toby Jones
Running time 2 hours 8 minutes (!!!)
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of science-fiction violence and peril

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

The biggest difference between the Jurassic Park / World sequels and the 1993 original is stated right up front here. We open on Isla Nublar, with a team of vaguely sinister scientists looking for… something, and worrying about running into some big nasty dino-threats. One assures the other, “Don’t worry. They’re long dead by now.” To which, obviously, we get an almost immediate refutation, as the gang is stalked and hunted and picked off by a very angry (and probably very hungry) T Rex. The scene plays out like a mishmash of other sequences from previous films, but mostly it sticks to recreating the opening and first T Rex scene from Jurassic Park. Where the Spool’s first (and still best) film in the series showed a very definite hint of danger, exposing only snorts and a quick shot of a talon amidst all the mayhem of that famous prologue, Bayona just throws a big-ass T Rex at the audience with no build-up or even reason to be afraid of it in the first place. It’s not a terrible scene but it illustrates just how much an eye for detail and a sense of space and timing can help elevate even the most dire summer blockbusters, and how that is not the case with this one.

Hearts Beat Loud

June 15, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Brett Haley (2018)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

I feel like I should start out by saying I like Brett Haley. I spend a lot of time, both in my writing and in person with people who put up with my endless movie rants, bemoaning the current Nice Movie Scare cinema is going through. And while it’s true that there have always been Nice Movies made for Nice People, it seems like the Hollywood landscape is scrambling right now to throw these things together and ship them into theaters as fast as possible. I guess we don’t have musicals anymore to take people’s minds off the fact that we’re literally about five seconds away from a Dr. Strangelove scenario every moment of every day (and no, Damien Chazelle doesn’t count because he’s a fucking sociopath who shouldn’t be allowed within five hundred feet of a film set - more on him later, if you can believe it). So we have these light Nice Comedies for Nice People to watch. But it’s true, Brett Haley actually stands out from the pack by pure virtue of him seeming to enjoy making films and have genuine empathy and respect for his own stories and characters. He’s not cynical in his filmmaking, something surprisingly rare for people in his position. His I’ll See You In My Dreams and The Hero, while both suffering from an almost unbearable Niceness, both had their hearts in the right place. The easiest contrast to this would be my vote for Worst Picture of 2017, Lake Bell’s I Do…Until I Don’t, another film from a director I like that nonetheless drowned in its own cuteness to the point where I couldn’t tell whether or not she was fucking with me. Never a good sign.

Claire's Camera

May 30, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Hong Sang-soo (2017)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

There’s a fine line between throwing yourself out there and putting it all on the line for the world to see and accidentally pooping yourself on stage. Both will certainly get a reaction. Both could even be called art. But again, knowing where that line is will be the important part.

Filmworker

May 24, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Tony Zierra (2017)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

I love Kubrick. He’s one of the filmmakers I consider a true Master, along with Ozu, Ramsay, Godard, Fellini, Fassbinder, Spike Lee (the American Godard, after all) and maybe Roy Andersson. I know I’m not alone in this. But my level of obsession has, at times, threatened to overtake even my more generalized over-arching love of Cinema itself. I have every biography, have read and heard every interview, listened to every commentary track by his collaborators, read and re-read all the Rob Ager articles, sat through the pretty dismal and pointless Room 237 (for the record, it’s not that Kubrick wasn’t encoding his films with hidden narratives, it’s that the theories in that doc have nothing to do with anything he was actually getting at), have seen his stuff in theaters every chance I’ve gotten to do so. I’ve read most of the books his films are based on (I’ve tried but have never been able to get through The Luck of Barry Lyndon despite it being short as hell - Red Alert and Clockwork Orange are the best ones). I love Kubrick. I know Kubrick. So I’ve always wanted a documentary about Leon Vitali.

Tully

May 07, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Jason Reitman (2018)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Look, I have no idea how to get into how over-the-top ridiculous the entire premise of this movie is without diving into spoiler territory. It’s frankly blowing my mind even now that Tully of all fucking things ended up requiring a spoiler warning, but here we are. Don’t ever let anyone tell you we don’t live in interesting times.

Trailer Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

January 22, 2018 by Guest User in francis friel, trailer review

by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

“What we see and hear onscreen is part of who we become.” - Fred Rogers

Every year Sundance throws some stuff out there that makes you mental-note yourself to death with worry, trying to remember all the new features to look out for six months or a year down the line. Inevitably, if you’re like me, you have a list ready and when a title eventually makes its way to Netflix or your local video store you have that A-HA moment and grab it right away, high on your own I Know Everything About Movies kick. But this year Focus Features is going to just about break the planet in half with a film that could threaten to derail all the bad will built up over the last few months or so in Hollywood. Because for every Weinstein and Spacey and Toback that gets blasted across headlines everywhere, there’s been a ghost looking out for all of us. A beam of light that’s about to return to screens and remind everyone that even in these Dark Times, there’s always the possibility of something better.

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

December 14, 2017 by Guest User in francis friel, reviews

Directed by Rian Johnson (2017)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

Unpredictability is always a virtue of good storytelling. Paul Thomas Anderson has said that, while it’s always smart to stay one step ahead of your audience, you need to let the audience know they’re being guided by a steady hand. One step ahead is good. Twenty steps ahead is arrogance. On the other end of the spectrum, we might find someone like David Lynch - operating from the rarefied air (or ocean, as he may call it) of a man at home in his own subconscious. But they can’t all be Lynch, being the holy master of modern American surrealism. They can’t all be Anderson, for that matter, asking bigger questions than mainstream cinema has any rights to answer - all while groveling in the dirt with the rest of us. So. There’s unpredictability - never tipping your hand, keeping a few narrative tricks up your sleeve, loading your plot with clever misdirections and twists… and then there’s Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.