Tag / katherine waterston

by Jaime Rebanal

Jonah Hill’s Directorial Debut Mid90s and the Encapsulation of Time: TIFF Review

✯✯✯✯½

To talk about Jonah Hill’s Mid90s one would have to mention how much a testament to said era this film truly feels like. But it also feels like very perfect material for him to cover knowing that he already had been made big thanks to the coming of age genre with Superbad, but I would never have suspected that anything near as good as this. Mid90s isn’t a film that shallowly builds itself upon a love for that place in time, but it’s a film that seeks to capture all the good and bad memories that have formed our own sense of nostalgia – if anything better creates a perfect time capsule from said era. Like the best coming-of-age films, the formation from a memory isn’t something new, yet the brutality of the honesty on the screen can also make such films resonate. Don’t think of this as being Jonah Hill’s answer to Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird from last year, but like said film, it’s his own capsule of what shaped him to be the person he is – and it all plays to such a wonderful onscreen testament.

Continue reading →

Advertisement
by Jaime Rebanal

Logan Lucky – Review

✯✯✯✯

Steven Soderbergh has always been one of the most interesting American filmmakers working today, and for good reason. After he was supposedly going to “retire” from directing films after the made-for-television Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, he comes back with another heist comedy along the lines of the Ocean’s films with Logan Lucky. But what made Soderbergh so fascinating among many other contemporaries was how he transitioned between making films for wider audiences and independent productions akin to Richard Linklater. And even when he made films for a more mainstream appeal, he still manages to retain the charm of his smaller productions – among many reasons Logan Lucky continues a streak of wonder from a diverse filmography. One end you’ll have a good time, another you’re finding some sort of odd experiment with his name on it – and Soderbergh somehow manages to remain intriguing with the many highs and lows of his own career.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Inherent Vice – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice will certainly leave the most common moviegoer baffled with their own experience although given the source material that won’t turn out surprising at all. But it’s hard enough for me trying to describe what Inherent Vice will leave behind just from a single viewing because it almost feels like a hallucination as it moves by. Yet at the same time, we’re caught up inside of a web of lies almost like a Philip Marlowe story. Inherent Vice is a blend of eras and it’s the sort of experiment that only a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson himself could bring to the table in such a manner. But in this indulgence, Paul Thomas Anderson also manages to summarize on the spot what exactly Inherent Vice is about, because of how much we can take in from one go to that point it’s so baffling yet it still keeps us watching. It keeps us watching because it’s absolutely wonderful in that sense, because it’s Paul Thomas Anderson at his craziest, and if that doesn’t signify something good I don’t know what will.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Alien: Covenant – Review

✯✯

For as many films as the Alien franchise has managed to spawn, only Ridley Scott’s original film has maintained where it was at its very best. That’s not to say James Cameron’s Aliens isn’t fantastic in its own right, but it sets up what’s brought the franchise down as more films had come along: the whole universe ended up becoming far too big for its own good and thus it began to progress far too much like a video game. Now with Ridley Scott’s prequels coming along, we have Prometheus only being as broad as ever and adding to this problem even with my own enjoyment of it, so that’s where my skepticism for Alien: Covenant had rose higher. But I wasn’t merely disappointed with Alien: Covenant, I was so frustrated with what it wanted to be, even to that point it managed to leave a rather bitter taste in my own mouth by the time it was over, because of what it wanted to be all at once, and overall, how little I ended up caring for the final product.

Continue reading →