Split Decision: I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum
In honor of Bottle Rocket’s 25th anniversary, who is your favorite character in any Wes Anderson movie?
Split Decision: Date Night
This week’s question: What is a film you love that premiered at any year's Sundance Film Festival?
Split Decision: Sundance Faves
This week’s question: What is a film you love that premiered at any year's Sundance Film Festival?
LITTLE FISH sets a romance against complicated backdrop
by Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer
Bad timing aside, it seems like there’s too much squeezed into Little Fish–the focus on the disease doesn’t give Emma and Jude’s relationship enough room to breathe.
SUPERNOVA has great performances and sweaters, but little texture
by Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer
There’s no one right way to be gay, but gay people do have different experiences than straight people, and it’s not as simple as inserting gay characters into a straight narrative.
Split Decision: Charlie Chaplin's Films
Each week, Ryan will pose a question to our staff of knowledgable and passionate film lovers and share the responses! This week’s question: In honor of the recent centennial for The Kid, what is your favorite film directed by Charlie Chaplin?
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 MoreTommy C. Appreciation Club: The Outsiders
Written by Kathleen Rowell (screenplay) and S.E. Hinton (novel)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and appearance by Tommy C.
Running Time: 1 hour and 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
by Hunter Bush, Nikk Nelson, Ryan Smillie and Liz Locke
The Tommy C. Appreciation Club, or TCAC, solemnly swears to watch and appreciate all theatrical performances by Tom Cruise then recap them, round-table style. In this edition, the Moviejawn crew chats about the minor role Tommy C. plays in Coppola’s 1983 flick, The Outsiders.
Read MoreThanksgiving for Halloween?
Krisha
Written and Directed by Trey Edward Shults
Starring Krisha Fairchild, Alex Dobrenko and Robyn Fairchild
Running time 1 hour and 23 minutes
MPAA Rating R for language, substance abuse and some sexual content
by Ryan Smillie
If you think about it, Thanksgiving is a pretty apt setting for a horror movie. Family members gathering - maybe even trapped - in one location, dormant conflicts lurking like ghosts, a sharp carving knife at the center of the table. In his 2014 debut feature, Krisha, Trey Edward Shults takes full advantage of these horror possibilities to transform what could be a usual family- and addiction-centered Thanksgiving drama into something both more menacing and more thoughtful.
Read MoreTommy C. Appreciation Club: Interview With a Vampire - The Vampire Chronicles
Directed by Neil Jordan
Written by Anne Rice (screenplay and novel)
Starring: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Kirsten Dunst
Running Time: 2 hours and 3 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and vampire violence/gore
by Jaime Davis, Ashley Jane Davis, Audrey Callerstrom, Emily Maesar and Ryan Smillie
The Tommy C. Appreciation Club, or TCAC, solemnly swears to watch and appreciate all theatrical performances by Tom Cruise then recap them, round-table style. In this edition, the Moviejawn crew embarks on a bonkers adventure with our pal Tommy in Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles.
Read MoreThe Personal History of David Copperfield
Written and directed by Armando Iannucci
Starring Dev Patel, Hugh Laurie and Tilda Swinton
Running time: 1 hour and 59 minutes
MPAA rating: PG for thematic material and brief violence
be Ryan Smillie
A Charles Dickens adaptation is supposed to be dreary. Impoverished orphans in factories, delinquent debtors in prison, jilted lovers in faded wedding dresses. And these elements certainly play a major role in Dickens’s novels, through which Dickens sought to expose and satirize the bleak conditions and hidden inequalities of Victorian society. Equally present, however, are the novels’ timeless sense of humor and their unforgettably distinct characters.
Read MoreJazz on a Summer's Day
Directed by Bert Stern
Featuring performances by Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington and Mahalia Jackson
Running time 1 hour and 25 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
A year after making history in 2018 as the first African American woman to headline Coachella, Beyoncé released Homecoming, a rightfully lauded concert documentary featuring not only meticulously edited footage of her two two-hour sets but also a behind-the-scenes look at her rehearsals, preparation and inspiration for the festival. Praised for its celebration of Black culture, in particular the HBCU experience and a multitude of global musical styles, Homecoming also drew on a rich history of concert documentaries, going all the way back to 1959’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day, newly restored and available via virtual cinemas this week, on Kino Marquee.
Read MoreThe Truth
Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring Catherin Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke
MPAA rating: PG for thematic and suggestive elements, and for smoking and brief language
Running time: 1 hour and 46 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
After Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters (2018), his compassionate masterpiece about a makeshift family living on the margins of an unnamed Japanese city, it might have been reasonable to guess that his next film would continue his two-decade-long exploration of the fringes of Japanese society. Instead, The Truth, his follow-up feature, sees Kore-eda leaving his usual milieu to capture the tense reunion of a famed French actress and her screenwriter daughter (French film titans Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, in their first on-screen appearance together). Kore-eda’s first film set outside of Japan and not filmed in Japanese, The Truth is clearly distinct from the rest of his filmography, but lacks none of the heart and emotional complexity that make his films so moving.
Read MoreWelcome to Chechnya
Directed by David France
Featuring Olga Baranova, David Istee and Maxim Lapunov
Running time: 1 hour and 47
by Ryan Smillie
I remember reading Masha Gessen’s “The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge” in The New Yorker almost exactly three years ago. Amid years of increasing anti-gay legislation and hate crimes throughout Russia, the Chechen government had initiated anti-gay purges, targeting the LGBTQ citizens of Chechnya. Gessen detailed the lead-up to this anti-gay campaign, the torture inflicted on its targets, and the efforts of Russian LGBTQ activists to protect gay Chechens. Days after reading Gessen’s article, David France, director of How to Survive a Plague and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, was in Moscow, beginning work on his next documentary, Welcome to Chechnya, which debuts on HBO on June 30th.
The Grey Fox (1982) - 4K Restoration
Written by John Hunter
Directed by Phillip Borsos
Starring Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs and Ken Pogue
Running time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
MPAA rating: PG
by Ryan Smillie
Danny Young: I thought you died!
Bill Miner: Well, I haven’t.
A man comes out of confinement and faces uncertainty as he finds the world has changed around him. No, this isn’t my weekly nightmare of what will happen when New York’s stay-at-home order is lifted, it’s Kino Lorber’s new 4K restoration of 1982’s The Grey Fox. Directed by Phillip Borsos, The Grey Fox boasts a heartfelt, tender performance from Richard Farnsworth and stunning cinematography, both of which more than make up for a plot that, though always sensitive and engaging, can feel a bit slight at times.
Read MoreZombi Child
Written and directed by Bertrand Bonello
Starring: Louise Labeque, Wislanda Louimat and Katiana Milfort
Running time: 1 hour and 43 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
“When the anthropologists appear, the Gods depart.”-purported Haitian proverb
In 1789, the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille and the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Across the Atlantic Ocean, in the colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), a group of free blacks appealed to the Declaration’s assertion that all men were free and equal to demand the right to vote. The French colonial government denied the appeal and violently crushed a brief insurgency against the decision. In return, the population of African and African-descended slaves, who outnumbered the European colonists nearly ten to one, launched a revolt that ended with the abolition of slavery, the expulsion of the French colonial government, and the independence of Haiti.
Read MoreSynonyms
Written by Haim and Nadav Lapid
Directed by Nadav Lapid
Starring Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire and Louise Chevillotte
Running time: 2 hours and 3 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
When I started learning French in earnest in middle school, a textbook warned to watch out for faux amis (false friends), words that look like English words but have different meanings. Un raisin is a grape, not a raisin. Attendre doesn’t mean “to attend,” rather “to wait.” And our class was told many times not to use excité to say we were excited (it wasn’t until later that we learned it most often means “aroused”).
In a sense, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms is filled with faux amis. Inspired by Lapid’s own flight from Israel to France, the film follows Yoav (Tom Mercier, in an electrifying debut performance) as he arrives in Paris
Read MoreEnd of the Century
Written and directed by Lucio Castro
Starring Juan Barberini, Ramon Pujol and Mía Maestro
Running time: 1 hour and 24 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
There are few things more mortifying than being reminded that you’ve already met a person whom you presume to be a stranger. Revealing that you’ve forgotten, racking your brain to try to remember when you've met before, getting more embarrassed by the second - just thinking about it is making me shudder. Can you tell it’s happened to me before?
Before You Know It
Directed by Hannah Pearl Utt
Written by Hannah Pearl Utt and Jen Tullock
Starring Hannah Pearl Utt, Jen Tullock, and Linda Arroz
by Ryan Smillie
Typically, you’d be disappointed if you watched a soap opera looking for any kind of nuanced portrayal of family dynamics. Stolen babies, evil twins, or medically inaccurate bouts of amnesia? Sure. But a thoughtful look into what happens after the stolen baby is returned or when the evil twin is exposed? Not exactly what All My Children trafficked in.
Stockholm
Written and directed by Robert Budreau
Starring Noomi Rapace, Mark Strong, and Ethan Hawke
MPAA rating: R for language and brief violence
Running time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
In the mid-1970s, three bank robberies loomed large in the public consciousness. John Wojtowicz’s 1972 holdup of a Brooklyn bank was adapted into Sidney Lumet’s acclaimed Dog Day Afternoon. Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and subsequent participation in a bank robbery with the Symbionese Liberation Army served as inspiration for a significant subplot in 1976’s media satire Network (also directed by Lumet). Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson’s five-day standoff with the police after taking hostage four Stockholm bank employees was never dramatized into a Lumet-directed movie. Instead, it was through this incident that the term “Stockholm syndrome” was born, the phenomenon by which hostages form a seemingly irrational bond with their captors as a means of survival. Unlike Dog Day Afternoon and Network’s relatively quick turnarounds from newspaper headlines to silver screen portrayals, the forty-five years between the original Stockholm syndrome incident and Robert Budreau’s new film, Stockholm, provide a difficult amount of baggage for Stockholm to overcome.
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