Category Archives: Comedy

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw review — Lots of calories, no nutritional value

August 16, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by David Leitch | Written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce | 137 min Makes a lot of sense that the stuntman-turned-filmmaker Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) would be called to extend the Fast & Furious brand in this spin-off. It features two of the three bullet-headed stars of the globally popular cars-and-bikinis-and-heists-based franchise.…Read More

Blinded by the Light review — It helps to be a Springsteen fan going in

August 15, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Gurinder Chadha | Written by Chadha, Sarfraz Manzoor, and Paul Mayeda Berges, inspired by the music and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen | 117 min Recent gems from across the pond, Pride and Sing Street , are the movies Blinded By The Light wants to be: heartwarming, nostalgia-fuelled coming-of-age pictures with a dash of…Read More

Reviews from The Vault: Vol. 6 — Quirky Gems

August 7, 2019 flawintheiris

From 2005 to 2009 I was a programmer on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax, every Sunday morning hosting The Love & Hate Movie Show. I talked about what I was seeing and revisited some of my favourite films of old, pretty much what I do now here on FITI. I still have a lot of…Read More

Reviews from The Vault: Vol. 5 — Stinkers

August 5, 2019 flawintheiris

From 2005 to 2009 I was a programmer on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax, every Sunday morning hosting The Love & Hate Movie Show. I talked about what I was seeing and revisited some of my favourite films of old, pretty much what I've been doing here on FITI since 2010. I still have a…Read More

The Farewell review — Chinese family drama hits universal notes

July 30, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Lulu Wang | 100 min Billi (Awkwafina) is close with her grandmother, Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), even though they live a planet apart—Billi and her parents emigrated to America and she lives in New York, while Nai Nai lives in the Chinese city, Changchun. When Nai Nai goes into the hospital…Read More

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood review — Tarantino delivers a sprawling nostalgia-fest

July 28, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino | 161 min We all know Quentin Tarantino loves movies, and that he makes movies about movies. With his ninth feature, he's also telling us he loves television, and the cheesier American pop culture of the 1960s. In this long, languid production, probably best described as a comedy, he…Read More

The Dead Don’t Die review — Zombie picture raises dead, laughs

June 20, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch | 104 min Even the forever cool and laid-back Jim Jarmusch—whose previous work includes Down By Law, Night On Earth, Dead Man, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Paterson—gets angry. You can feel him seething, and maybe even just a bit of his bitterness in the aftertaste of this film,…Read More

Late Night review — Progressive politics aren’t enough to make it work

June 17, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Nisha Ganatra | Written by Mindy Kaling | 102 min Anyone who's been reading this blog lately, or following the FITI Twitter feed, will know what a big fan I am of Olivia Wilde's Booksmart, a film that works within a recognizable genre—the teen high-school comedy—while channeling some fairly progressive ideas, all while being…Read More

Reviews: Knock Down The House, My Dinner With Hervé, Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot, Wine Country, Mid90s, Always Be My Maybe

June 14, 2019 flawintheiris

Knock Down The House | Netflix The inspirational documentary offering evidence that there are still leaders in the United States whose motivations are respectable, responsible, and righteous. The film follows the primary campaigns of four progressive Democrats, all women, all very different from different states, and all of whom are looking to make a difference…Read More

Booksmart review — An instant comedy classic

May 25, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Olivia Wilde | Written by Katie Silberman, Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, and Sarah Haskins | 102 min This doesn't happen nearly often enough: A movie walking a tightrope of joyful brilliance, where the energy of the thing in every department—script, performance, direction, production, score—is all working at a high level to produce something…Read More