Film Reviews

Onward Christian Soldier: Dallas Documentarian Captures Story of the Free Burma Rangers

Onward Christian Soldier: Dallas Documentarian Captures Story of the Free Burma Rangers

A Breakdown of the New Aladdin Film vs. the Original and Yup, There’s a Musical Too

A Breakdown of the New Aladdin Film vs. the Original and Yup, There’s a Musical Too

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Two Wildly Different Films Made in Dallas Get Center Stage at the Oak Cliff Film Festival

By Danny Gallagher
Jun 7, 2019

Film events like the Oak Cliff Film Festival aim for diversity and variety in their movie offerings, in order to offer the dream afternoon for the raging cinephile. "We're looking for stuff that's a little off the beaten path," says Barak Epstein, the co-owner of Aviation Cinemas, which runs the...
Oak Cliff Film Festival’s Menu Includes Movies By Danny Boyle, and Starring Jeff Goldblum and Awkwafina

By Danny Gallagher
May 13, 2019

The reason you go to film festivals like the Oak Cliff Film Festival is because you want to see films. Unlike other fan gatherings, you're not there to wait in ungodly lines for an awkward handshake with a celebrity, blow a week's pay on an overpriced collectible or work your...
This World Won’t Break’s Hard-Luck Story Thrives on the Goodwill of Dallas

By Alex Gonzalez
Apr 16, 2019

This past Saturday, This World Won’t Break had its world premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival. The film, directed by Josh David Jordan, is a modern-day musical that tells the story of Wes Milligan (Greg Schroeder), a Texas troubadour who fails to find success as a musician. One day,...
Welcome to Marwen Crashes Into the Limits of Hollywood’s Imagination

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 26, 2018

At times, as it dissolves between scenes of its cast as literal toy dolls machine-gunning Nazis in the made-up Belgian town of Marwen, Zemeckis’ movie seems an inquisition into the limits of the director’s own imagination
On the Basis of Sex Shrewdly Makes RBG Into a Feminist Jimmy Stewart

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 24, 2018

Leder’s film mostly devotes itself to the future Supreme Court justice’s first world-shaking sex discrimination case, 1972’s Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue: Ginsburg and her husband ... argued against a discriminatory statute before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Vice Can’t Make Sense of Dick Cheney, but It Can Give You a Headache

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 24, 2018

Don’t look to Vice for psychology or even a sense of presence; McKay uses the Cheneys’ grim unknowability as an excuse not to bother going for either
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Does James Baldwin Proud

By Chuck Wilson
Dec 23, 2018

Baldwin’s central story, dialogue and time-jumping narrative structure are all in place, but so, too, is a sumptuous visual style that serves to deepen the novelist’s themes of racial injustice and the powerful countering force of love
Ben Is Back Pits a Dazzling Julia Roberts Against the Opioid Scourge

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 20, 2018

With the quickest blink or nervy glance, Roberts communicates to us both what her character, an ordinary woman named Holly Burns, has convinced everyone around her to think she’s feeling but also all of her secret doubts, fury and anguish
Emily Blunt Rules, and Mary Poppins Returns Is Not at All Atrocious

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 20, 2018

True to the spirit of the chipper, somewhat aimless live-action Disney day killers that inspired it, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns gets better the further it wanders from its actual story.
Aquaman Proves Superheroes Are Better Down Where It’s Wetter

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 19, 2018

Not incidental to Aquaman’s pleasures is its vision of a mixed-race hero, played by a mixed-race actor, fighting to protect and understand clashing aspects of his heritage
In Mary Queen of Scots, Great Women Face Hard Truths About Wielding Power

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 13, 2018

The actresses share only one scene in the film, but Mary Queen of Scots sets them up in counterpoint, two divergent approaches to the question of how women who wield power can actually govern the men around them
Cities Roll, Fight and Eat Each Other in the Otherwise Meh Mortal Engines

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 12, 2018

The film plays as if a three-hour epic has been sliced down to size in the editing, but only the scenes establishing character and context have been cut
Into the Spider-Verse Is the Best Superhero Movie Since The Dark Knight

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 11, 2018

It sets a host of alternative Spider-folk running amok in the New York City of Brooklyn teen Miles Morales, the mixed-race Spider-Man (his father is black and his mother Latinx) invented for the comics in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma Is a Masterpiece of Memory

By Yolanda Machado
Dec 7, 2018

The writer-director shot Roma in chronological order, without showing the cast the script, unveiling it to the actors the same way it is for the audience, piece by piece, a chance to marinate in each moment as it plays out
With Mowgli, Netflix Has Its First Blockbuster

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 7, 2018

This time, though, the lessons are urgent, the jungle threatened by man, the wicked tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) a true terror vowing to one day taste that boy’s blood
As Fascism Rises, Schindler’s List Has Become Almost Radical

By Alan Scherstuhl
Dec 6, 2018

Today, I’m still awed by the film’s scope and scale, by its relentless energy and attention to detail, by its interest in faces and names and coats and belongings
HBO’s United Skates Takes a Thrilling Spin Through Roller-Skate Culture

By Alan Scherstuhl
Nov 30, 2018

And much of the present-day free-skate footage, shot at what have come to be known as “Adult Nights” at skating rinks, also proves invigorating, an invitation to relish the momentum, the joy and the peacocking pride of grown-up skaters
Netflix’s Exquisite Happy as Lazzaro Asks: What’s to Live for After a Life of Toil?

By Alan Scherstuhl
Nov 29, 2018

This time, we meet the sharecropping peasants of the remote village of Inviolata, living lives of seasonal toil, lives that look — except for the occasional radio or lightbulb — like they might have a century or so ago
Emma Stone and The Favourite’s Royal Women Scheme Deliciously

By Bilge Ebiri
Nov 28, 2018

It’s the early 18th century, there’s a war on with France, and the persistently ill, somewhat childish Anne struggles both to assert her authority and to preserve her kingdom and her crown
With Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers Fully Commit to Cheery Meaninglessness

By April Wolfe
Nov 23, 2018

In typical Coen fashion, most people in the movie meet ironic or wry deaths, but this time the Coens seem to be actively eschewing any deeper emotional connection between the audience and the characters

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