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Tenet September 3, 2020 By: Button Hunter Friesen Spell it backward or forward, it spells the same. From Christopher Nolan - the virtuoso behind The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception , and Dunkirk - comes Tenet , an action blockbuster on a scale not seen before and that will never be replicated again. Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real-time. The plot summary I just gave you is the exact one supplied by the studio. I did this for fear of spoilers and because I cannot confidently give out any more information than what has already been covered. Tenet may be the most incomprehensible and mentally straining movie ever made. It feels like taking a whole semester of advanced physics in only one class period, all while being set in a warzone. I have no doubt there will be case studies and theses done about this movie. Nolan wastes no time throwing his audience over the deep end. He begins the film at a breakneck pace, moving from scene to scene in the blink of an eye. You struggle to grasp onto the high concept in real-time and are always playing catchup. This problem only exponentially gets worse as Nolan refuses to hold your hand as he goes further down the rabbit hole. Even one of the characters in the movie says, “Don’t try to understand it, feel it”. It’s almost as if Nolan inserted that quip just for the audience. The inability to follow the movie can be attributed to the out-of-the-box concept, but mostly it falls on Nolan’s embarrassingly weak script. The problems here are the same ones people have been saying about him for years now, that he overuses exposition and under-delivers on the emotional parts of his narrative. Tenet is nearly all exposition and no emotion. Many times the exposition gives more questions than answers and seems to be intentionally leading us astray. It’s also Nolan’s coldest film as any emotion is forced through cliche storylines that seem included to check off a box rather than tell a story. On a technical level, Tenet is both Nolan’s most and least impressive film to date. The action set pieces mix both practical and visual effects seamlessly, creating awe-inspiring showcases of movie magic. The use of time inversion in fight sequences, car chases, and an entire battle are just some of the moments that you have to see to believe. Hoyte Van Hoytema encapsulates all the gorgeous chaos in stunning widescreen cinematography and composer Ludwig Göransson overtakes your ears with a perfect hard-charging score. What’s a problem here, and has been for some time now for Nolan, is the astoundingly poor sound mixing. Without hesitation, I can say that Tenet is the loudest movie I have ever seen. Every gunshot felt like it went off next to my ear and every explosion shook my entire body. The ungodly loud sound effects made it near impossible to comprehend much of the dialogue, which was already poorly mixed, to begin with. If you thought it was hard to understand Bane in The Dark Knight Rises , just wait until you try to understand what the characters are saying here. Even with all my gripes, I was still enveloped in the world Nolan has created. There have been dozens of movies where I was lost after a few minutes and checked out for the remaining runtime. With Tenet , I was lost after minute one and completely invested for the remaining one hundred forty-nine. Part of that interest comes from the spectacle and part of that comes from the likable cast. In a star-making lead performance oozing with charisma, John David Washington plays our protagonist, who is literally called The Protagonist. He’s our vessel as he enters into this strange new world with no previous knowledge and must solve a deadly puzzle that goes against all logic. Robert Pattinson keeps his hot streak going with another charming performance as The Protagonist’s sidekick, Neil. Kenneth Branagh is intermittently good as our Russian villain, Andrei Sator. He’s exceptionally menacing in the quieter moments and cartoonishly over-the-top in his moments of outburst. Elizabeth Debicki plays the most emotionally resonant character as the helpless wife of our villain. Debicki is great in the role but is unfairly used more as an object for the story. Tenet is a full-on assault of the senses that contains unparalleled moments of spectacle and ambition. It’s nowhere near the top of Nolan’s filmography and will surely require multiple viewings to unravel. Make sure to pack some ibuprofen and prepare to have your mind twisted in ways you never thought possible. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

1967: A Dramatic Shift in Film March 29, 2023 By: Hunter Friesen The year 1967 can be regarded as one of the most pivotal years in cinema history. It was a transitional year where the conventional and unconventional came crashing together for the first time on such a large scale. Using David Newman and Robert Benton’s article “The New Sentimentality” (1964), we can categorize the conventional and unconventional into two distinct categories: Old Sentimentality (conventional) and New Sentimentality (unconventional). These two categories were not just found in film, they were also found in nearly every aspect of American culture. Each version of sentimentality garnered financial and critical success in 1967. No two movies were more opposed that year in style, viewpoint, and audience than Mike Nichols’ The Graduate and Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner . Also, no two actors better represented their respective sentimentality better than Dustin Hoffman and Sidney Poitier. In this essay, I’ll explain why and how 1967 was such a cinematic turning point that shifted the paradigm of power away from Hollywood conventionalism and towards a new era of auteur cinema. I’ll also look at how both Poitier and Hoffman were shaped by their generation and how their respective careers were forever changed in 1967. To show the difference between Old and New sentimentality, we must define what exactly they are. In simplistic terms, Old Sentimentality represents conventionalism and past values. The values this movement revered were about the good old days of ruggedness, strong moral character, and banding together. These ideas were born out of the nation’s unity and recovery from World War II and were prevalent throughout the next few decades. Figures such as Dwight Eisenhower, John Wayne, and Henry Fonda embodied this type of thinking, and films such as The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, and The Best Years of Our Lives were most popular. New Sentimentality began making a presence around the start of the 1960s. It was less about thinking as a group and more about thinking and acting for oneself. New Sentimentality pushed the idea of being self-indulgent, getting carried away, looking inward, and being authentic. John F. Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, and Elvis Presley were the purveyors of this thinking, which could be found in films such as Bonnie and Clyde (screenplay by Newman and Benton) and Easy Rider . In 1967, producer and director Stanley Kramer released Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner . It was an all-star vehicle for him filled with the biggest stars of the past few decades in Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Sidney Poitier was cast as the figure who’s coming to dinner, John Prentice. The plot is fairly straightforward as Prentice and his new fiancé, Christina, intend to get married. John is a respected medical doctor who has accomplished everything under the sun. Their engagement is under a deadline as he must fly to Europe that night. Christina’s parents, played by Tracy and Hepburn, are taken aback at the reality of their daughter marrying a black man, even though they raised her with a liberal mindset. Stanley Kramer was a director known for incorporating social commentary into his films. He previously had great success with The Defiant Ones and Judgement at Nuremberg . Even though his social messaging would make one think that he was a part of the younger outspoken generation, Kramer geared his films toward the older generation of moviegoers, the ones that would better respond to conventionalism and star power. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is part of an era in Hollywood where films about race were becoming more popular but weren’t purely benevolent in the way they handled the topic. Instead of utilizing themes like life under Jim Crow, black activism, or black community culture, a lot of films before the Hollywood New Age illustrated that racism was wrong through a white character's conversion from racial prejudice to tolerance. The prototypical movie of this thinking, In the Heat of the Night (also starring Sidney Poitier), won Best Picture that year. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , the racism obstacle is solved by the white parents' eventual acceptance of John marrying their daughter. In his book "Genre and Hollywood," author Steve Neale (1988) breaks this style down even further by explaining that “dramatic conflict [in racism films] was to be structured around two opposing poles clearly representing good and evil, with a readily identifiable hero and villain”. This idea of opposing forces is seen in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner as the prejudiced maid and the nosy Tillie act as the villains for the heroic Draytons to vanquish. Black characters rarely saw themselves as the heroes of their own story. They were either relegated to being the villain or to serve the heroic white characters. This role came to be known as the “noble negro”, a role that Sidney Poitier would play throughout the majority of his career. In her YouTube video Why The Help ?, Isabel Custodio (2020) describes this role as having “its own predictably recurrent tropes. These characters had impossibly noble traits seemingly honed to mollify white audiences. They were slow to anger, had no sexual impulses, and often sacrificed themselves for white co-stars.” Black audiences at the time often found Poitier's characters disingenuous. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , they thought it was ludicrous that Poitier played a world-renowned doctor who acts more holy than Jesus. Why give the parents a pat on the back for accepting a virtually perfect man? Kramer, on the other hand, believed that was the point. By making Prentice so perfect, only his skin color could be the barrier to marriage. Kramer’s viewpoint worked for his audience and the Oscars, as the film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning for Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay. 1967 marked the peak of Poitier’s career. His successes in previous films had typecast him as the “noble negro”, a role the younger generation didn’t accept. Now that his career is over, it is ironic to say that Poitier’s appeal was to the generation of people that had been holding him back all those years, and not to the people who were looking to create change within the nation and Hollywood system. As Poitier’s career was about to fall, the career of Dustin Hoffman was about to take off like a rocket. 1967 saw the release of The Graduate , directed by Mike Nichols, who was making his follow up to the critically acclaimed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? . That film put Nichols on the map with its groundbreaking vulgarity and sexual innuendos, with the latter carrying forward into his next film. The Graduate centers around Benjamin Braddock, who has just graduated college and doesn’t know what to do with his life. He finds himself in an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner. This sexually charged relationship goes on for quite some time until Benjamin catches feelings for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine. A beacon of New Sentimentality, The Graduate spoke to a generation through its unmatched authenticity. Dustin Hoffman had no screen presence before being cast. He had no major previous roles and did not possess the classic movie star looks such as the blonde hair of Robert Redford and Paul Newman, or the towering charisma of Warren Beatty. Hoffman was of Jewish descent, which could be easily discerned from his looks, making him even more of an outsider to his contemporaries. Nichols saw something in Hoffman, an opportunity to use his “flaws'' to tell a story to a younger audience growing tired of Hollywood perfectionism. Film critic Roger Ebert (1967) described Hoffman’s performance as “painfully awkward and ethical that we are forced to admit we would act pretty much as he does, even in his most extreme moments." Hoffman’s awkward and anxious performance is filled with the traits of New Sentimentality. The idea of people having inward problems, sleeping around with others, and being wounded were ideas becoming more and more part of the national psyche, especially to young adults. Newman and Benton stressed that New Sentimentality had to do with you and you alone. “Personal interest is the abiding motivation and... your primary objective is to make your life fit your style.” The idea of personal interest and selfishness comes to its apex at the end when both Elaine and Ben run off together, though they have no idea what they are going to do now that they’re gone. Unlike Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , Nichols (and screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham) doesn't craft the story around the message. It’s the inverse, as the message comes from the story. Ebert noticed this subversive social messaging in his review, saying, “[the film] is inspired by the free spirit which the young British and French New Wave directors have brought into their movies. It is funny, not because of sight gags and punch lines and other tired rubbish, but because it has a point of view. That is to say, it is against something.” With The Graduate , the audience is the one deciding the message for themselves, instead of it being intentionally swayed towards one side like Kramer did (even if he had good intentions). The Graduate’s methods proved highly successful, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1967 (beating out second-place Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner ) and garnering seven Academy Award nominations, winning for Nichol’s direction. The film also inspired a generation of filmmakers to craft stories for a new generation of moviegoers. Films such as American Graffiti, Harold and Maude , and the filmography of Woody Allen took a more liberal policy towards sex and personal relationships. Dustin Hoffman’s career exploded following 1967. He continued with down and dirty roles in films such as Midnight Cowboy, Straw Dogs, and Lenny . His imperfections won him a passionate following of fans that saw themselves through him. He reached his peak in 1979 with his Oscar-winning role in Kramer vs. Kramer and stayed at the top of his game for nearly a quarter-century with acclaim in later roles in Death of a Salesman, Rain Man, and Tootsie . 1967 was the transition point of two eras in American cinema. It was the beginning of the end for Hollywood conventionalism and the beginning of the rise of auteur-driven filmmaking. Looking through the lens of Old and New Sentimentality, one can see why and how this specific period marked that shift and how it enforced lasting consequences on how filmmakers see their audience and how audiences see themselves on the screen. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Spoiler Alert December 2, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen While it usually goes without saying, I feel I’m obliged to mention that this review is spoiler-free. I guess it doesn’t really matter since this film adaptation of the novel Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies kind of spells everything out within its title. The meta-ness of that title brings up a philosophical question: If a movie is incredibly predictable, but the creatives recognize and address it, is it then still predictable? For many years, the answer to that question would likely be a “no.” But with the overall rise in meta humor in nearly every genre (comic-book: Deadpool ; comedy: This Is The End ; horror: The Cabin in the Woods ), the pendulum has swung back the other way, making the unpredictable totally predictable. Spoiler Alert sits somewhere in the middle of this problem, as it presents a highly personal true story in such a conventional way that - even for all its positives - makes for an incredibly forgettable watch. It’s also a little surprising that this film is not a dime-a-dozen release by a streaming service as television plays such a large part in the life of its main character, Michael Ausiello, who currently serves as the editor-in-chief of his website, TVLine. Instead, it finds its way into theaters through Focus Features, where it will likely fall in line with the rest of the adult-skewing victims of this new box office landscape. Michael, played here by The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons in another attempt at meta-humor, has always used television as a safe space for his emotional traumas. Every day as a child, he and his mother would settle on the couch and catch up on soap operas. It eventually became the way he realized he was gay and offered escapism while his mother fought, and lost to, cancer. So, when Michael’s long-time partner Kit (I’m skipping a lot of plot here, but there’s only so much margin space, and the story of them meeting is very by-the-numbers) is diagnosed with the deadly illness, the heartaches of the past meet the reality of the present. To further emphasize the importance of television in Michael’s life even more, director Michael Showalter ( The Big Sick, The Eyes of Tammy Faye ) stages several fake 80s sitcom moments, complete with overacting and canned laughter. These moments sort of serve as flashbacks to Michael’s past, with the bad memories portrayed through the rose-colored glasses of network television. It’s a jarring concept, one that never meshes well with the dramatic material that comes with a cancer drama. The same can be said for Michael’s narration, which is addressed to Kit in the afterlife and often butts in at the worst possible moments. Parsons is a weird movie star, mostly because he has a sort of “supporting actor that steals the show” energy, which was fully evidenced over the twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory . He can’t totally shake that persona, with some moments of sincerity coming across as stilted. He and Ben Aldridge as Kit do make a nice pair, with Sally Field as Kit’s mother being a welcome addition in the couple times she pops up. Calling Spoiler Alert the more dramatic (and slightly inferior) version of Billy Eichner’s Bros is a little reductive, but it isn’t untrue. On both the comedic and dramatic fronts, everything within Showalter’s film has an aura of “been there, done that,” keeping it out of my memory bank for more than an hour after finishing it. I remember a lot of worse films than Spoiler Alert , but I also remember a lot of better ones too. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Twisters July 17, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Is it a good or bad sign if the most interesting aspect of a disaster movie is the humans? Twisters may be the first film to buck a decades-long trend within the disaster/monster subgenre where our species has been the superficial window to view the events within our world that hold dominion. The occasional glances at the watch here are reserved for the moments of tornado-based destruction, with the character-driven scenes coming in like a knight in shining armor to break up the monotony. I guess that’s what you get when you hire the director of one of the most tender human dramas of the decade. Lee Isaac Chung’s inability to fully flex his filmmaking muscles is definitely the lesser of two evils, as none of the traditional journeymen that could have been hired to fill the chair would have a percentage of the heart he instills here. A ragtag group of Oklahoman storm chasers has replaced his Arkansan family from 2020’s Minari , each ready to risk their lives in the name of science. But the risk turns out to have exactly that asking price, with the only two survivors of the five-person team being Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos). It’s another startling reminder Mother Nature is undefeated in any attempts to tame her. That fatal error of judgment was enough to send Kate behind a desk in the New York office of a weather service. She’s put her wild days behind her, which we all know isn’t true because we’re only ten minutes into a two-hour movie. Javi calls her back into the fold once an even deadlier series of storms starts ripping through her state. This time they’ve got the advantage of upgraded technology and a team full of PhDs, a combination that could help them answer the elusive question of how to prevent and stop these storms. The implementation of serving the common man as a reason to be in this line of work is sold well by Edgar-Jones and Ramos, both of whom carry a small amount of traumatized weight in their performances. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith doesn’t give them much of anything to work with, nor does he have regular Joes like you and I do anything more than get swept up in storms and look solemn after their towns have been destroyed. There’s an underdeveloped subplot about Javi’s boss acting as an ambulance chaser, buying up the ripped-up land at rock-bottom prices under the guise of offering a fresh start to those who have nothing left. That aspect could essentially be mirrored onto the film itself, with Smith and Chung always talking about their love for people, yet the way they walk illustrates otherwise. This is where Glen Powell enters the scene as “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens, his good-ol’-boy charm and looks implemented to distract from the film’s mental problems. That strategy works more times than it doesn’t, with Powell’s movie star swagger perpetually threatening to burn a hole through the screen. It’s no surprise that the most impactful moment of weather is just a drizzle of rain while he dons a cowboy hat and white T-shirt while striding to his mammoth pickup truck. But the simplicity of that breathless moment instantly becomes a double-edged sword, as the weightless scenes with millions of dollars worth of special effects feel even more disappointing in comparison. The theater roars and the screen fervently flashes, but the bone-chilling feeling of real danger is never felt. There’s a moment where Kate and Tyler rescue a mother and child by clinging for dear life at the bottom of a hotel pool. Chung holds the camera on their fear-stricken face as an act of humanistic connection, yet the CGI debris and wind effects rob those feelings from truly bubbling to the surface. To incorrectly apply a famous phrase: it’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Twisters may still end up being one of the better blockbusters of the summer on account of it’s central characters being the secret main attraction, although I’m not exactly sure that’s how the plan was drawn up at the Universal offices. The rusty old door has been opened with care that it needed, while the well-greased one seems to be giving the most trouble. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Daddio June 24, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen A 2024 release that could have easily found a better home in 2020, Christy Hall’s Daddio is one of those single-location films that popped up time and time again on streaming services during the waning days of the pandemic. It was almost a cheat code for stars and filmmakers to keep themselves active, limiting the action of the project to one location and keeping the number of cast members to less than you can count on one hand. The problem was that many felt exactly like that: an excuse to get back to work rather than a genius idea that plays with time and setting (examples include Locked Down and The Guilty ). But there were also some gems like One Night in Miami… and The Outfit . Daddio falls somewhere in the middle, never irritating because of its pandemic-esque presentation, but never unique enough to break through this subgenre. The concept is as simple as the setting: An unnamed woman (Dakota Johnson) hails a cab from JFK airport to get home. The driver, Clark (Sean Penn), and her start to share a bond during their late-night journey, striking up conversations as they deal with traffic, construction, and all the other things New York throws at them. Clark is a vulgar driver, one of those who “tells it like it is” as he spouts some pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo about the way humans behave. At first, he’s pretty courteous, complementing Johnson’s character for not being on her phone as they drive away. Quickly that turns into a monologue that starts with him saying “We used to be a culture…” filled with mini-rants on credit cards, technology, and apps. It’s this opening stretch of Daddio that’s the roughest, as Hall’s weakest material is used to acclimate us to these characters and setting. The weakness has less to do with the quality of the writing, lying more with the tiredness that comes from the specific points it is trying to make. The generational archetypes that these characters possess have been mined over and over again throughout the years, almost to the point where there’s nothing left to explore. That’s not to say that filmmakers should steer away from the material altogether, but there definitely needs to be something truly special to incite even a modicum of interest. Hall doesn’t possess that with her script, even if the actors show a great ability to hold our attention. Johnson often lives and dies by the material she’s been given (see The Lost Daughter compared to Madame Web ), with this being closer to the former example. There’s an aura of confidence radiating from her in attempting the one-location challenge, something that Penn also matches from the front seat. His casting is almost too perfect, which maybe comes from the fact he played a very similar role as a no-nonsense ambulance driver to a much younger co-star in Tye Sheridan in last year’s Asphalt City . The streetlights glittering the highway are always perfectly angled to illuminate Penn’s eyes, and the distant skyscrapers reflect in the windows. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael makes the brief glimpses outside the cab incredibly gorgeous, with the steam from the sewers and stoplights creating a smoky cool setting. The edges of the frame are tinged black, almost as if you’re looking through a half-awakened eye that just got off a red-eye flight. Hall places importance on the little things inside the cab just as much as what goes on outside of it. The camera will catch a twitch of the eye or a certain hand gesture, all of them adding up to reveal more about the characters. It’s an impressive showcase for her as a director, one that inspires confidence for the future. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret April 26, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen I thoroughly hated the experience of watching Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I hated it so much that I looked away from the screen for about a quarter of the runtime, as any continuation in staring would be a detriment to my physical and mental health, which was being depleted as if I was in a bare-knuckle brawl. I breathed a sigh of relief and my shoulders finally dropped back down to their normal position once Hans Zimmer’s score (yes, you read that right) took over once again and the credits began to roll. But my displeasure and exhaustion were not spawned from the quality of the movie but of its content. I despise feeling second-hand embarrassment more than anything else in the world. Unluckily for me, both the Judy Blume book and film adaptation of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. are the most efficient and unfiltered deliverers of that exact nauseating feeling. First-hand embarrassment is no picnic either, but at least that comes from my own actions. Why would anyone on Earth want to have that feeling shared with them when they’ve done nothing to deserve it? I’ve avoided most of the entire subgenre of cringe comedy, even though some of them look like they could be fun from time to time ( Curb Your Enthusiasm ). The Office narrowly avoids my disdain on account of its over-the-top antics that are beyond relatability. The story centers on the 11-year-old titular character (Abby Ryder Fortson) in the 1970s as she navigates the time between childhood and adulthood. Her family has just moved from New York City to a suburb in New Jersey, one where people rake leaves, wash cars, and play in the street. Margaret and her newfound friends go through the experience of their changing bodies, developing feelings for the other gender, and every social situation being the most important thing in your entire life. But Margaret is not riding alone in this arduous journey. It’s actually a three-generation affair as her mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) are also dealing with new surroundings and roles as caretakers. It goes to show that you’ve never really mastered life no matter how many times you’ve been around the block. The best kinds of movies are the ones that make you feel something. Despite hating every feeling I experienced here, I know it all came from a good place. Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig ( The Edge of Seventeen ) keeps both the specificity of the story and the universality of the themes intact, allowing everyone to apply Margaret’s journey to their own lives. All those painful memories of the stupid things you did as a teenager flood back to the surface. That pain is a good kind of hurt to authors Blume and Craig, as you haven’t really grown as a person if you can’t look back on your past mistakes. Just as I give Craig credit for finding the emotional core of the movie, I also have to fault her for losing the stakes and structure. Almost all of the final act resolutions come too quickly and feel unsubstantiated. Everything being tidied up in a neat little bow also breaks the complexity and authenticity of the story. Fortunately, the central female trio are all great and do a lot to cover this pothole. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret may tell an oversimplified story, but its low sights allow it to hit its target with precision. I can’t say I enjoyed it or will ever think about watching it again. Nonetheless, it’s a force that is trying to do good in the world, so I recommend people give it the chance to do just that. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

The Fabelmans September 10, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen The Fabelmans had its World Premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Universal Pictures will release it in theaters on November 11. From the opening scene of his most personal film yet (that’s quite the statement), Steven Spielberg lays all his cards on the table. Done in a single take, we find the young Spielberg stand-in (named Sammy Fabelman) scared to see his first movie: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth . His father pulls him aside and attempts to explain the entire machination process of how films are projected onto the screen. This tactic doesn’t go over well, so Sammy’s mother takes him to the other side, and simply explains that “movies are dreams that you never forget.” In the end, the mother wins out, with Sammy’s reaction to the film being a combination of unexplainable terror and wonder. Through this scene, we get a thesis statement on Spielberg’s approach to filmmaking. He’s a born storyteller, pouring his mother’s heart into every frame. And he’s also a master craftsman, leaning on his father’s engineering mindset to construct fantastic sequences that defy belief. The more The Fabelmans tell its story, the more that thesis becomes clearer. We learn how one man could be attracted to making movies about a killer shark, a world-traveling archeologist, friendly and unfriendly aliens, the Holocaust, American presidents, World War II, and even modern-day dinosaurs. Seeing The Greatest Show on Earth , specifically the train crash scene spurs, something in Sammy. He feels compelled to recreate the memory with his own camera and train set, which he does to his mother’s amazement. A passion is quickly born, one that often gets caught in the crossfire of the distraughtness of the Fabelman family over the subsequent years. Just as he’s done with every genre (except for Westerns, which he claims to be interested in doing for his next project), Spielberg conquers the recent trend of directors making their autobiography about how they fell in love with cinema. You can feel the pure joy Spielberg has in recreating his early 8mm films. Janusz Kaminski’s exquisite Capra-esque lighting and Michael Kahn’s (who's been with Spielberg since Close Encounters of the Third Kind ) editing provide that extra needed touch to every moment. And John Williams’ uncharacteristically sneaky score always finds its way into your heart. Of course, being a Steven Spielberg film means that The Fabelmans contains an overabundance of emotion. But fret not all of you that are allergic to the Spielbergian touch, because here it’s used to tell a much more layered story. With the help of his Munich and Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner, Spielberg also shines a retrospective light on his parent’s marriage, something he never understood as a child. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano both do wonderful work as Mitzi and Burt, respectively. It’s easy to see how these opposites attracted to each other, and how that opposition eventually won out in the form of divorce. Newcomer Gabriel LaBelle plays the part of Sammy for the large majority of the film. Hopefully, his great performance here will be the first of many to come. Two other performances of note are Seth Rogen as the unofficial Uncle Benny and Judd Hirsch as Sammy’s maternal great-uncle. Both urge Sammy to continue his moviemaking passion in their own way, with Hirsch stealing the show in the two scenes he has. The Fabelmans is a collection of Spielberg's greatest hits, all delivered to their greatest effect. There’s laughter, tears, and wonder in this story that is much more than the sum of its parts. If Spielberg climbs the Dolby Theatre steps to collect his third Best Director Oscar, then it will be one of the few long overdue wins that came at the right time for the right project. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Awards Update: Post-Cannes Realignment June 18, 2024 By: Hunter Friesen Welcome to an ongoing series where I cover the 2024/2025 awards season. On a regular basis, I will update my Oscar predictions, taking into account the new information that has been received since the last update. Full predictions in every category can be found on the Home and Awards page. Two of the Big Five (plus Telluride as the unofficial sixth member) film festivals have concluded for the year, which means it's time to take stock of where we are in the Oscar race. The chants of "U-S-A!" rang throughout the Palais a few Saturdays ago as Sean Baker’s New York-set Anora took home the Palme d’Or, the first American film to reign victorious since Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in 2011. Having attended the festival and seen the film for myself, I can say that Anora is Baker’s best shot yet to gain some Oscar recognition. It’s his most commercial film, a laugh-out-loud comedy that manages to instill some social and political commentary along the way. It’s also overlong and not his most incisive work, but the sheer amount of fun it incites makes up for that. Given the recently announced October 18 release date by Neon, the film will most likely replicate the rollout strategy of Red Rocket . Splashy appearances at Telluride and the New York Film Festival are almost a given, with the biggest question being the possibility of a stop at TIFF. You’d have to go back to 2008’s The Class to find a Palme d’Or winner that didn’t make an appearance at TIFF, with, coincidentally, The Tree of Life being the exception as it released in theaters in June. You’d then have to go back to 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to find a film that premiered in Cannes and then went on to win the TIFF People’s Choice Award. Parasite came close in 2019 as it won the Palme d’Or and then placed in the second runner-up position at TIFF. Given my audience’s reaction to Anora , and that of critics, I think there’s a strong possibility that it places well at TIFF, if it decides to show. Neon has taken each of their four previous Palme d’Or winners ( Parasite , Titane , Triangle of Sadness , Anatomy of a Fall ) to TIFF, with three of them earning a Best Picture nomination later down the line ( Titane was never going to be serious Oscar player). As for nomination outcomes Anora could replicate, I’d look towards the strictly above-the-line, overall low-nomination players such as Licorice Pizza , Women Talking , and Past Lives . An Original Screenplay nomination feels like a lock at this point, with Best Director being in the mix. I was hesitant about both Jonathan Glazer and Justine Triet last year, so Baker finding his way into the final five would not surprise me. Staying within the winner’s circle, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light marked a triumphant return for India to the Croisette after a nearly thirty-year absence. Janus Films holds the domestic distribution rights, the same company that guided Drive My Car ’s hugely successful and influential underdog campaign in 2021. The reactions out of Cannes for Kapadia’s film are just as high as they were for Hamaguchi’s. We’ll just have to wait and see how much the critical enthusiasm for the film survives until later in the year, as Drive My Car didn’t announce itself as a serious Oscar player until it won the Best Picture prize from all three major U.S. critics groups (LAFCA, NYFCC, NSFC). There’s also the problem of Kapadia not being a popular figure by the Indian government , which dampens the film’s chances of being submitted for Best International Feature. The French/Mexican production Emilia Perez will surely find itself submitted by the former country, save for the unlikely possibility of another French film stealing the spotlight during the fall festivals. Netflix made the splashiest acquisition of the festival when it scooped up the domestic distribution rights, a move that bodes well for the number of eyeballs that will be fixated on this Spanish-language crime musical. At the moment, I’m still questioning what kind of Oscar player it will be. I could equally see a scenario where it nabs a half-dozen nominations, including Best Picture, and a scenario where it just finds itself with a single ho-hum placement in Best International Feature. While I certainly didn’t envision Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness to be as dominant as The Favourite and Poor Things , I did think the vibe would have been a little more Oscar-friendly. The good-but-not-great reactions and quick release don’t bode well for the film, which is making me lower its overall nomination total from six (including Best Picture), to just a namecheck nomination in Best Original Screenplay, which I’ll likely drop once the fall festivals reveal more contenders. I can confidently say that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis will not be an Oscar player in any category, as most of the negative aspects of my mixed review stemmed from the film’s poor production values and acting. Its recent acquisition by Lionsgate doesn’t add any strength to its chances, but it does make me happy that more people will be able to see it. Still stuck in destitution hell is Ali Abassi’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice , of which I was a big fan. I’d still be a bit skeptical of the film’s awards chances if it had landed a distribution deal at the festival, so the lack of one really puts a dent in any hope one might have for it. Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig was certainly my Palme d’Or prediction going into the final day, so walking away only with a Special Prize of the Jury certainly felt like a disappointment. I’m sure Neon felt the same way as they picked up the film midway through the festival. The critical reception is still quite high, so there’s a chance it could find some critics' group love later in the year. Iran will not be submitting it for Best International Feature, and I’m not sure Neon will be giving it the push it needs now that its eggs are firmly in the Anora basket. The rest of the summer season will be spent evaluating likely below-the-line players such as Twisters , Deadpool & Wolverine , and Alien: Romulus . We’ll also be getting a steady dripping of fall festival rumors and lineup announcements. I’ll have another update in a few months before the fall festivals commence. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark

Joker October 10, 2019 By: Button Hunter Friesen After the catastrophic failure of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) which had yet to produce a quality film, Warner Bros switched its game plan in favor of establishing single characters rather than a whole cinematic universe. The first of this new character-driven model is Joker , Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of how one man can go so far down the rabbit hole. The story follows Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a man placed on this earth “to spread joy and laughter.” The downtrodden citizens of Gotham have got it bad right now, but Arthur seems to have it the worst. He’s a social outcast with mental health issues that cause uncontrollable fits of laughter, and he lives with his mother in a disgusting apartment. With the world getting crazier by the day, Arthur’s attempts to keep sane become more and more futile, leading him to the point of no return. Directed by Todd Phillips, Joker supplants itself into its grungy setting of 1980s Gotham (very much modeled after New York City), complete with overflowing garbage and “super rats.” The swooping cinematography by Lawrence Sher highlights the grimy claustrophobia, and the unrelenting score by Hildur Guðnadóttir never allows for a moment of levity. You’re fully immersed within the cesspool that the city has become. Besides brilliantly setting the scene, the technicals also lend their hand to the creation of suspenseful and terrifying sequences of shocking violence. These acts are incredibly tough to watch — even more so when you factor in Phoenix’s no-holds-barred performance. Phillips very blatantly takes some influence (that’s the polite way of saying it) from Martin Scorsese’s great works of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy . The structure of the story and a few key scenes look and feel ripped right out of those classics. While Scorsese is the master to take after, the whole thing here feels like a self-indulgent exercise by Phillips to make himself out to be a real auteur and not just the guy who made The Hangover trilogy. There’s an aura of artiness that is coated to imitate the feeling of thematic depth while offering little substance under the surface. Despite being about the most famous comic book villain of all time, Joker doesn’t follow the usual narrative track. There are some winks and nods that keep it connected to the Batman universe, but the story is solely focused on our central character and his mad descent. Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver stray away from the previous model that never allowed comic book movies to address societal issues. They plunge headfirst into dissecting the issues of mental health and class warfare. The pair deserve some praise for their efforts, but these attempts at making statements are handled with too little originality and nuance. Throughout the film, the only message that sticks out is that society and people are terrible and capable of bringing us down despite our best efforts. It’s a grand statement, but one that’s so over-simplistic and devoid of depth that it ends up meaning nothing. It’s merely a statement of fact that everyone has figured out throughout their life and seen in better movies before. T aking over the role following the character’s worst rendition by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad , Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant and downright terrifying as the clown prince of crime. From his maniacal laugh, contorted body movements, and rubbery facial expressions, Phoenix commands each scene and elevates some of the film’s follies. It reminds one of his equally brilliant performance as Freddy Quell in The Master , only this time, the crazy dial has been turned up to the max. You can never look away from him as he fills the entire frame. And you also never want to look away as he keeps you on the edge of your seat. In the reverse role from what he played in The King of Comedy , Robert De Niro does solid work as the comic - insulting late-night show host. It’s a role tailor-made for De Niro as he can poke fun and unintentionally spur Gotham’s societal struggles. Loud and abrasive, Joker is a film that makes a lot of noise but doesn’t say much of anything. But even with its mixed message falling flat, it still deserves praise for its boldness to go where others daren’t. Plus, it’s leagues better than anything the DCEU has and will ever offer, so there is some hope that DC characters will soon get their proper time in the spotlight. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Jojo Rabbit November 14, 2019 By: Button Hunter Friesen If you’re going to make a movie about the Nazis, you better make sure it’s going to be good. Multiply that rule by infinity if you’re going to make it a comedy. Because of this strict rule, only a select few have been able to take the greatest human atrocity of the modern era and turn it into a joke. Charlie Chaplin did it in 1940 with The Great Dictator (although he wasn’t fully aware of the horrors), followed by Roberto Benigni with Life is Beautiful in 1998. Now in 2019, Taika Waititi has added his name to that illustrious list with his newest film, Jojo Rabbit . Set in the waning months of World War II, this “anti-hate satire” follows the life of Jojo Betzler, a young boy growing up in the Hitler Youth. His patriotism runs so high Adolf Hitler himself acts as his imaginary friend. One day, Jojo discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa in their walls. This bewilders the boy, putting him in a quandary over what to do with his foreign guest. With an enemy in his home, Jojo must confront his nationalistic ideals and learn for himself what truly lies within the people he was born to hate. Apart from a few problems structurally and tonally, Jojo Rabbit is near faultlessly helmed by New Zealand native and Thor: Ragnarok director, Taika Waititi. From the often symmetric shot composition to the sumptuous production design, Jojo Rabbit is the most Wes Anderson-esque film that Wes Anderson didn’t direct. It does feel like Waititi is copying a little too hard from time to time, but the distinct whimsical style he employs effortlessly immerses the audience into the satirical world. Aiding this immersion, Waititi does what he knows best and interweaves comedy with drama as he pokes fun at the Nazis while also using them as a smaller target for his much grander message. That message is of peace and love, which can be authentically found within this story, especially in the interactions between Jojo and Elsa. A negative side effect of Waititi’s fluent directing is that it makes his middling writing stick it like a sore thumb. His risque plot eventually gets boiled down to a slightly over-simplistic message that isn’t able to land its punches as hard as it should. Weirdly, it all feels a little too safe for this kind of setting with these types of characters. The film also starts to lose its way around the middle third as a few of its many ideas and characters get lost in the shuffle. A few reveals are shocking, but only because not enough time was put into them to make us believe they were important enough in the first place. Even with these problems looming throughout the runtime, the script does have its shining individual moments. The slapstick one-liners mostly all land and the heart-tugging dramatic lines do hit close to home. With an assembled all-star cast, Jojo Rabbit is filled with great performances from A-list stars and fresh discoveries. The biggest hidden treasure that has been unearthed is the talent of Roman Griffin Davis. In his first-ever role, Davis perfectly translates his precocious character from the page to the screen. The future will be deservedly bright for him. Young star Thomasin McKenzie also does excellent work as Elsa. She already made a name for herself with last year’s Leave No Trace and her role here further solidifies her strong track record. Scarlett Johansson plays Rosie, Jojo’s sympathetic mother who takes in Elsa for hiding. Away from her usual Marvel role, this may be Johansson’s best work in years as she is both hilarious and endearing. In more purely comedic roles, Taikia Waittiti and Sam Rockwell are a blast as Adolf Hitler and Captain Kenzendorf, respectively. Taking the horrors of humanity and turning it into a comedic moral lesson is no small feat, especially when you target the worst of the worst. So even with his struggles here and there, immense credit should go to Waititi as he has crafted one of the better films of the year and made something that will be timeless in its message and morals. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Poitier and Hoffman: The Dueling Kings of 1967 Hollywood February 23, 2023 By: Hunter Friesen In all the years that cinema has been alive, 1967 is undoubtedly one of the most pivotal. After years of jealousy towards the European model of thinking, America finally opened itself up to a new wave of filmmaking, one heralded by auteurs who subscribed to the ideas of new sentimentality. Films such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate spoke to the younger audience of American cinema, offering exploration into forbidden topics such as sex, violence, and social change. Even though these films made their mark both critically and financially, it did not mean the death of old sentimentality in film, quite the contrary. In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner both were nominated for Best Picture that year, with the former taking home the prize. These two films appealed to the older generation through their use of star power and production values. What’s most striking about the dichotomy between these two sets of films is the leading men at the center of them. On one side sits Dustin Hoffman; a short (only standing 5’5”) aloof brown-haired boy. On the other side is Sidney Poitier, who stands tall at 6’2” and is both exceedingly handsome and elegant. Both of these actors represented different generations of cinema and were hugely important in the turning point of 1967. Dustin Hoffman had no screen presence before being cast in The Graduate . He had no major previous roles and did not possess the classic movie star looks such as the blonde hair of Robert Redford and Paul Newman or the towering charisma of Warren Beatty. Hoffman was of Jewish descent, which could be easily discerned from his looks, making him even more of an outsider to his contemporaries. Director Mike Nichols saw something in Hoffman, an opportunity to use Hoffman’s “flaws” to tell a more authentic story to a younger audience growing tired of Hollywood perfectionism. In The Graduate , Benjamin’s detachment from every aspect of life is something that connects with younger viewers. In 1967, the Vietnam War was still raging, and the American optimism that had been so prevalent since World War II had started to wane. Kids didn’t have their entire futures planned out and were starting to see the flaws within American society. Because of Hoffman and The Graduate , no longer does the main character have to have a goal to achieve or a lover to swoon over. Instead, they can be aimless and enter into an adulterous relationship with an older woman. This performance spurred Hoffman’s career further, with equally down & dirty roles in Midnight Cowboy and Straw Dogs just a few years later. Sidney Poitier, on the other hand, was, through his involvement in the projects, a proponent of old sentimentality in Hollywood. Where Hoffman’s popularity was beginning to boom, Poitier’s reached its peak and would soon come crashing down. His roles in both In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner shined a light on race relations within America but did it through the old lens of conventionalism. Of course, a black man leading a Best Picture winner and garnering acclaim for his performance isn’t something to shortchange. But Poitier played by Hollywood’s rules, playing stoic, calm, and poignant men that appealed to a generation that stood for professionalism and the status quo. In the Heat of the Night has Poitier play Virgil Tibbs, who solves a murder case in the deep south and confronts the town’s ideals through his merit as a detective and ability to withstand undeserved ridicule. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , Poitier is John Prentice, seemingly the world’s greatest doctor who rests the solution to his marital problem in the hands of Spencer Tracy, one of the great screen legends of the past. While both these roles allowed Poitier to address social change in intermittent radical ways, such as his retaliatory slap against Endicott and his fiery speech about thinking of himself not as a colored man, but just a man. Both of these movies portrayed the white savior narrative that had grown out of favor among the younger generation. Unlike Hoffman, Poitier’s appeal was, ironically, only to the people that had been holding him back all those years, and not to the people who were looking to create change within the nation and Hollywood system. This is why Poitier never stayed at the same level post-1967, as New Hollywood emerged and the old conventions started to die off, both literally and figuratively. Both Dustin Hoffman and Sidney Poiter were exciting actors for an exciting time in American cinema. Through their physical and personality traits, they appealed to different sets of ideals within the American psyche at a time when both sides came to a crossroads. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Gemini Man October 17, 2019 By: Button Hunter Friesen Henry Brogan (Will Smith) is the most elite assassin the U.S. government has ever had. He has 72 confirmed kills and is even able to hit a target on a moving train from over two kilometers away. Disillusioned and fatigued from years of killing, Henry decides to put it all away for a quiet retirement. Unfortunately for him, the life he’s lived the past few decades doesn’t just go away. After figuring out some dark secrets about his last job, Henry is betrayed by his government and made an enemy of the state. Knowing that Brogan is the best there ever was, the government decides to send their most valuable asset, Gemini; a direct clone of Brogan that “possesses all his strengths without his pain.”Pitted against a seemingly perfect version of himself, Henry must go on the run and fight to clear his name. Directed by two-time Academy Award winner Ang Lee, Gemini Man is both a marvel and a tragedy on a technical level. Repeating the technique he used in his previous feature Billy Lyn’s Long Halftime Walk , Lee uses a frame rate of 120 frames per second, five times more than the traditional 24. This results in a give-and-take situation where the technology grants unparalleled picture quality at the expense of your eyeballs. The glorious images become physically hard to watch and induce headaches, especially when paired with 3D. Another technical innovation that Lee incorporates is the use of de-aging on 51-year-old Will Smith to allow him to play the 23-year-old clone. Just like the frame rate, this technique has its ups and downs. During the early and darker-lit scenes, the effects look great and don’t cause any distraction. Near the end of the film is when things start to slide downhill. Scenes taking place in the daylight show off the imperfections in facial movements. The final scene is the most guilty as the effects are laughably atrocious and make the clone look more like a character from “The Polar Express” than an actual living human. And even with these technical innovations, Lee still isn’t able to make full use of them in the action set pieces. The larger shootouts are handled pretty well as they flow together with steady camerawork and tight blocking. The hand-to-hand combat sequences are when Lee loses focus, leaning heavily on the Jason Bourne style of choppy editing and shaky cam. It becomes hard to tell what’s going on and who’s winning a fight, especially since the two Will Smith characters look and dress exactly alike. With three credited screenwriters and countless that have come and gone over the years, the script for Gemini Man is a mess that feels like it was ripped straight from the 1990s. That feeling is fitting since the screenplay was first written in 1997 and seems to have never been updated. It is heavily laden with cliches and hammy dialogue that are impossible to recover from despite the cast’s best efforts. The plot is pretty simple on paper, but on film, it's a confusing mess. It’s a strain to keep all the facts straight and follow the reasoning for anything to happen. There’s also a lack of humanity and character development. Will Smith does his best in his dual roles, but the writing gives him nothing to work with. By the end, most characters are just shells of a person. As noted before, Will Smith turns in one of his better performances and does a great job in his dueling roles. As Henry, Smith is closed off and mature. When playing the clone, he’s more vulnerable. Even with writing’s severe limitations on what he can do, Smith can sell you on the idea that these are two separate characters. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Dani, Henry’s sidekick who’s forced to join him on the run. Winstead does a nice job as a companion to Smith. Unfortunately, she also falls prey to the writing and gets saddled with a cliched backstory and overly expository dialogue. Lastly, Clive Owen plays Verris, the leader of the Gemini Project and the supposed villain of the film. I say supposed because the film never really figured out if he is a bad guy or not. Owen does fine, but mostly because it's a role he’s been playing the last decade in subsequently worse films. Gemini Man is neither a good nor a bad film. Mainly it’s a tech demo that may lead to better films using these innovations in the future. It also teaches a valuable filmmaking lesson: all the bells and whistles money can afford are no match for a good story, which is something this film sorely lacks. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen