How to Start Watching: Akira Kurosawa
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
For his birthday week, we here at MovieJawn are celebrating the work of Akira Kurosawa! Check out all of the pieces here. Ian kicks us off with a starter pack!
Split Decision: A Dance With Dragons
In honor of Raya and the Last Dragon, who/what is your favorite on screen dragon?
Read MorePLAYING WITH POWER: THE NINTENDO STORY mashes the nostalgia button too hard
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
No matter how well Playing with Power presses on those nostalgic pleasure centers, once you strip away the viewer’s personal attachments its flaws become clear.
THE FATHER provides a window into a scary life circumstance
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
Florian Zeller puts us in the head of someone losing their memories and the result is a film that is disorienting and brilliant.
Slamdance 2021: BLEEDING AUDIO shows passion for fans of unknown bands
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
Despite their music being 100% in my wheelhouse, and as someone who lived and breathed pop punk from 2000-2004, I had somehow never heard of The Matches.
You can't fight CITY HALL, but who are Wiseman's docs for?
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
I tend to spiral when I watch a film that is universally acclaimed.
Split Decision: Sundance Faves
This week’s question: What is a film you love that premiered at any year's Sundance Film Festival?
Sundance 2021: LAND is an uneven melodrama
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
Robin Wright is one of those great actresses whose greatness you forget about until you see her on the screen.
Newly restored, it's time to watch THE MIRROR
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
I say Tarkovsky requires a mood, but the easiest way to get into that mood is to put on a Tarkovsky film.
SCHEMERS mixes memoir with fiction to indulge in nostalgia
by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer
Memoirs are nothing new in the world of literature, but true autobiography in the world of cinema it’s hard to come up with someone who directed their own biopic. Until now.
Read MoreTommy C. Appreciation Club - Magnolia
by Jaime Davis, Ian Hrabe and Emily Maesar
In this edition, the Moviejawn crew dissects Tommy’s performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
Read MoreMJ's Top Ten of 2020
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
A couple weeks before the end of the year (and what a year it’s been), I asked everybody to list their top five movies that they’d seen so far. This is always a tough chore because people are trying to cram in the films they’d heard about but missed throughout the year and then there’s the Christmas Day releases that only a few people have seen by that point. This means that people will always look back at their list in a year or two and find things that they wish they would've included, but just hadn’t seen yet. I feel like this year has exacerbated that situation because everyone has had to settle into finding films through different avenues.
Here, I’ve compiled everyone’s rankings and responses to give the MovieJawn Top Ten for 2020.
Read MoreSound of Metal
Written by Darius Marder and Abraham Marder
Directed By Darius Marder
Starring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci and Mathieu Amalric
Running Time: 2 hours and 10 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout and brief nude images
by Ian Hrabe
The phrase “Starring Riz Ahmed” should be movie code for “just watch this damn movie it’s gonna be great.” Ahmed has basically been must see kino since his breakout performance in the 2010 British terrorist comedy Four Lions, and he broke out stateside as Jake Gyllenhaal’s lackey in 2014’s Nightcrawler. Since then, he has starred in the HBO miniseries The Night Of, done turns in blockbusters like Star Wars: Rogue One and Venom, and with Sound of Metal Ahmed delivers a truly virtuosic lead performance that argues the case why he should be a megastar. Sure, there are other actors in Sound of Metal, but this is the Riz Ahmed show and it’s why I can’t recommend this enough.
Read MoreMy Psychedelic Love Story
Directed by Erroll Morris
Featuring Joanna Harcourt-Smith and Timothy Leary
Running Time: 1 Hour and 41 Minutes
Rating: TV-14
by Ian Hrabe
Errol Morris was the first documentarian who made me realize that documentaries could be just as artful and impactful as any feature film. I can’t remember why I watched The Thin Blue Line in high school, but I vividly remember the experience of watching that film. I watched as many of his docs as I could get my hands on at the public library, notably Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, Gates of Heaven, and Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Morris’s quirky, creative, non-fiction style was a far cry from the documentaries I was used to seeing in the classroom, and though his most acclaimed documentary--2003’s The Fog of War--was way over my head when I saw it, he still set the bar for what I thought documentaries should aspire to.
Read MoreCrock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
Directed by Julien Temple
Featuring Shane MacGowan, Johnny Depp and Siobhan MacGowan
Running Time: 2 hours and 4 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
by Ian Hrabe
It is, quite frankly, a miracle that Shane MacGowan is still alive. In terms of musicians who have lived a notoriously hard rock and roll lifestyle, the legendary Pogues frontman might be second only to Keith Richards in terms of being famous for his penchant for drink and drugs. It’s hard to imagine him speaking without slurring. In Crock of Gold--an inventive and engaging chronicle of MacGowan’s life and career--we primarily see MacGowan slumped over with glassy eyes and a drink in hand. He looks as if he is being kept alive by some sort of Irish curse. He has dental implants now, complete with one perfect gold tooth that is, shall we say, a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the teeth that were in a progressive state of decay throughout the 80s and 90s. He looks like a shell of a man, and though he can’t even narrate his own story here--a lot of the footage is of a zonked out MacGowan listening to old interviews--goddamnit, he’s still here.
Read MoreDating Amber
Written and Directed by David Freyne
Starring Fionn O’Shea, Lola Petticrew, Sharon Horgan and Barry Ward
Running Time: 1 Hour and 32 Minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
by Ian Hrabe
Few things seem more futile than conservative society’s war on homosexuality. Out of all the social issues that voting bloc rails against, the fight to prevent LGBTQ folks from having the same rights as everyone else feels like the most pathetic, and it’s one we can visibly see eroding. I worked as a teen services librarian for four years and one of the most eye-opening things about that job was how smart today’s teens are. Yes, the internet is a double edged sword but, one positive is that kids today are a lot more plugged-in to issues than I ever was when I was 13. These kids had openly out friends and classmates and it genuinely was not a big deal. That’s anecdotal evidence, but studies show attitudes toward same-sex marriage are changing no matter how many draconian bigots America installs on its Supreme Court. The upshot here is that there is a dearth of young adult literature and cinema that tell LGBTQ stories beyond the “gay best friend” trope.
Read MoreMemories of Murder
Directed by Bong Joon-ho
Written by Bong Joon-ho and Sung-bo Shim based on the play by Kwang-rim Kim
Starring Kang-ho Song, Sang-Kyung Kum, Roe-ha Kim and Jae-ho Song
Running Time: 2 Hours and 12 Minutes
by Ian Hrabe
2020 has been such an arduous undertaking that Bong Joon-ho winning Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture for his 2019 film Parasite feels like a distant memory. That was the last time I remember feeling totally elated when the world was still relatively normal. Parasite was also one of the last movies I saw in the theater before everything shut down, and ranks up there with one of my all-time favorite moviegoing experiences. There are few joys simpler than weighing down your coat with snacks from the convenience store next to the movie theater and sitting in a near empty theater watching a film in the middle of the afternoon, but seeing Parasite was a transcendent experience.
Read MoreThe Place of No Words
Written and Directed by Mark Webber
Starring Mark Webber, Bodhi Webber and Teresa Palmer
Running Time: 1 Hour and 35 Minutes
by Ian Hrabe
The logline of this film--"An innocent question by a little boy sets a family on an imaginative adventure to explore 'Where do we go when we die?'"--is misleading and a bit twee considering how heavy this film gets. While Mark Webber's impetus to make this film may have been his son asking this question, the film explores a different question: How do you prepare a young child for the loss of a parent? It’s a question that lacks any sort of clear answer, and in mining that question Webber has made one of the year’s most intimate and beautiful films.
Read MoreBorat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Directed by Jason Woliner
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova and Rudy Guliani
Running Time: 1 Hour and 35 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, and language
by Ian Hrabe
As if 2020 couldn’t get any more absurd, Sacha Baron Cohen has dusted off his Borat suit and mustache and delivered another satiric send-up of American culture just in time for the election. It has been 14 years since Borat won over American hearts and minds--the film that launched 1000 MY WIIIIFE impressions throughout the frat houses of America--and it’s hard to even fathom 2006 at this point in American life. It was an America where George W. Bush was a war criminal and the worst president the country had ever seen and, faced with Donald Trump and the GOP, Bush now seems like a toothless puppy in comparison. It’s fertile ground for Cohen’s brand of absurdist satire and, though Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is a clunky affair, it’s comforting to have a film that directly addresses and lampoons the political agita of the moment and the pandemic.
Read MoreSave Yourselves!
Directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson
Starring Sunita Mani and John Reynolds
Running time: 1 hour and 33 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language
by Ian Hrabe
If you ever wondered what War of the Worlds would be like as a mumblecore indie comedy, Save Yourselves! has you covered! But you know what? Considering how many indie relationship dramas there are out there about characters in their early 30s trying to navigate adulthood, adding an alien invasion to the mix is a novel idea that sets this film apart.
Read More