Tag Archives: Paul Dano

The Fabelmans review — Saving Young Spielberg

Directed by Steven Spielberg | Written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner | 151 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Crave A version of this review appeared in September on FITI during the Toronto International Film Festival  Considering this picture, Kenneth Branagh's Belfast from last year, James Gray's recent Armageddon Time, and the forthcoming Bardo and Empire of… Read More

Reviews: Hotel Artemis, Wildlife, Searching

Hotel Artemis Writer-Producer Drew Pearce delivers a fairly original b-movie/sci-fi/crime drama for his debut as a feature filmmaker. It's 2028, and Los Angeles is going up in flames due to a city-wide riot, but the Artemis is busy. It's a clinic for criminals, where the patients are named after their room allocations. I said original, but… Read More

New On Canadian Netflix: June/July 2017

Here are a cross-section of a number of mildly-to- solidly recommended films recently made available on Canadian Netflix. (You can click on the movie titles to read my original reviews where I’ve written them in the past.) *One note: In May I recommended Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, a film when I first saw it back… Read More

Swiss Army Man review — Love, Death, and Farting

Written and directed by Daniels (Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan) | 97 min | ▲▲▲△△ One genuinely positive thing I'll say about what we've seen at the multiplex in 2016—there've been some peculiar outliers. I'm thinking about The Neon Demon and The Lobster when I say that, and Swiss Army Man can join those films in being deliriously… Read More

Youth review — The Artist as an Old Man

Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino | 124 min | ▲▲▲△△  Sorrentino's last film, the sumptuous Italian drama The Great Beauty, was something to see (it had everything from orgies to a giraffe) but a little hard to care about. It featured Toni Servillo as a 65-year-old writer unable to come to terms with the… Read More

Love & Mercy review — Excellent vibrations

Directed by Bill Pohlad, written by Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner, based on the life of Brian Wilson.  Coming soon on my podcast, Lens Me Your Ears, with Stephen Cooke, is an episode on musical biopics. My arm needed a little twisting on this subject because biopics in general aren't my favourite genre—I always ask… Read More

12 Years A Slave review

Directed by Steve McQueenWritten by John Ridley, adapting a book by Solomon Northup12 Years A Slave is the most honest and unvarnished depiction of slavery I've ever seen. I'd wager it reaches a verisimilitude unmatched in the history of Hollywood movies on the subject—of which there haven't been that many, granted. It's hard to find historic… Read More