Reviews of the Bosch

Greta Garbo. The Swedish Sphinx. One of the greatest stars of classic Hollywood. And someone whose career I have almost entirely missed out on. Despite starring in such 1930s hits as Queen Christina , Camille , and Ninotchka , Garbo is one of those stars who has eluded me in my consumption of classic cinema. The 1930s especially has been a weak spot for me, I’ll admit, but it’s no excuse to have overlooked this titan of a Hollywood figure. So why then, in my interest in finally watching a Garbo film, did I choose Grand Hotel , which isn’t so much her own movie as it is arguably the first ensemble film of the sound era, in which Garbo co-stars with Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and John and Lionel Barrymore? Maybe it’s because it’s the source of her most famous quote (“I want to be alone”), or because I could get a hold of it easier than some of her other films (which are also on my list to see). But regardless, I don’t see how it shouldn’t be a good representation of her and her

When Bong Joon-ho won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year for his film Parasite  (topping the list of movies I’m excited for in 2019), it was a big deal. Not just because he was the first Korean recipient or that it gave those of us familiar with his work for years bragging rights of knowing this obscure foreign filmmaker already. But because it meant his work was finally being evaluated seriously as important and innovative -which it has been for years, going back to his 2000 debut Barking Dogs Never Bite.  Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer , 2013 Director Bong, as he’s known by those who work with him, is one of the most fascinating figures in modern world cinema, his movies striking and stylized, sharp and raw. Never one to shy away from disturbing topics or to mask the darkness of human nature, his stamp is instantly recognizable in films as dissimilar as Mother  and Okja . Uniting his filmography is an unwavering political consciousness, especially in his science-fiction films,

       Richard Curtis movies are movies about love. Most of them are about conventional romantic love, but the occasional love letter like The Boat That Rocked  or Yesterday  will slip in there. Even War Horse , not often thought of as a Richard Curtis film due to being directed by Steven Spielberg (who can’t help but overshadow most other creatives on the films he directs), is a boy and his pet love story. He’s clearly very compelled by the idea of love, its importance, its many varieties, and what it means, enough so to make a movie encompassing a wide variety of loves with Love Actually . But even this wasn’t quite comprehensive enough, dealing with love strictly pertaining to human relationships (and of course it unfortunately leaves out any non-heterosexual, non-cisgender relationships, thus coming up short of what it strives to be). There came a point though when Curtis wanted to explore love in the abstract as a companion to living a meaningful life …and perhaps when he wan

Ad Astra. To the Stars. We as a species have always chased the unattainable and strived to make it attainable, but our greatest Everest has always been space. The limitless and elusive mysteries of the universe is a powerfully compelling drive, and one we’ve only just begun to explore. And it’s by far the most noble of our explorations, being almost entirely for knowledge’s sake rather than material gain as has been the course of the history of our own planet. We’re desperate to know what’s out there, how vast the universe is and consequently how small we are, and whether or not we’re alone. But what if that knowledge isn’t what we want it to be? What do we do and how do we live with it? These are just some of the questions posed by James Gray’s cerebral science-fiction film, which follows an astronauts’ journey to find his long-disappeared father, a pioneering space explorer in his own right, in the deep end of the solar system. I’ve admired Gray since The Immigrant and champ

Hustlers  doesn’t begin as a first person narrative. In fact it starts out in a direction not unlike Soderbergh’s Magic Mike , whereby a young, somewhat inexperienced stripper Dorothy (Constance Wu), new to a hot New York club, is taken under the wing of the popular veteran Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) to learn the ropes and techniques necessary to succeed in the business. But that was 2007, and when the film first cuts to Dorothy talking to a reporter (Julia Stiles) seven years later, we see the change in her personality palpably. It reminds me a lot of I, Tonya  and not much at all of Goodfellas where Ray Liotta began and ended his story essentially the same person. Christy Lemire called this film “ Goodfellas  in a G-string” and she’s not wrong, but where the 1990 Scorsese mafia film chose to focus on the brutality, the thuggishness, and general unpleasantness of its characters (rightfully so of course), Hustlers  openly walks the tightrope on the righteousness of its characters’ cr

Richard Curtis finally made the leap to directing his movies himself in 2004 with Love Actually . But what is a Richard Curtis-directed feature like? Obviously there’s a greater degree of control –the three films he directed feel like unconstrained visions. There’s a maverick wildness with certain ideas and characters and plotlines not present to such a degree in the movies he wrote for other filmmakers. With Love Actually  and The Boat That Rocked  we see his enthusiasm for ensembles, inspired heavily by Robert Altman. But mostly there’s a more pronounced style, a greater emphasis on music, a cheekiness, and occasionally stand-out editing choices. The sharpness of the script remains the same. The quality of the story: not entirely so. And that brings us to what’s probably one of Curtis’ lesser films, certainly his weakest as a director. But it’s also a movie I do quite like in some regards. The Boat That Rocked  was his first movie since  Bean  (that one not particularly good i

Andy Muschietti’s 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s It  ended with the Losers’ Club promising to come back in twenty-seven years if the titular monster they defeated ever returned. It was a smart idea to divide the book, which is spread across two timelines, into two movies. The updated setting of the late 1980s for the first film to correspond with a modern era for the sequel really worked to that movies’ advantage -not just in connecting to the nostalgia of the target demographic, but in how the culture and aesthetic of that era complimented the plot (it fit right in with the epidemic of child disappearances around that time for example). However in spite of the ending, the movie didn’t feel like one half of a whole, which was the intent. It was good enough to stand alone as a coming-of-age horror movie with a beginning, middle, and end. It Chapter Two , for being based in the same novel, has to prove its own necessity. What puts it at a disadvantage from the get-go is that