Netflix’s Sierra Burgess is a Loser makes some risky bets. The teen flick casts a plus-size girl as the staple ‘uncool’ protagonist, a role typically filled unconvincingly by the Hollywood Homely. Its story revolves around duping someone’s feelings. It flirts with the contentious issue of consent. Too bad it also takes the easy way out.
A Simple Favour may be the first Feig film that you come for the mystery and stay for the mystery. And the comedy too, of course.
If Project Gutenberg is a painting, it will be a mess. Looked as a whole, the movie seems like a calculated collection of lines arranged into an intricate picture. Trace each line though, and they seem to break and vanish. One wonders if it’s the case of laying so much thread that the knot becomes too tangled.
Searching is one of the best recent movies about technology.
It’s also an effective mystery/thriller that is gripping and engaging; the type that lays down its breadcrumbs calculatedly so you follow and get lost and find your way back again, though not so vague that savvy audiences can’t figure things out on their own. But it’s the movie’s relationship with technology that I find most fascinating, and what essentially starts out as a gimmick eventually elevates the film into new storytelling grounds.
Sometimes you need to get serious. So here are three upcoming serious-looking movies that you can get serious about getting serious. Or, well, name drop at a hang-out sesh to show that you keep up to date on these things. Like me.
What’s the meaning of Alex Garland’s 2018 science-fiction movie Annihilation? A lot of things, actually. And what it means may differ from me and you.
That’s probably not the answer you’re looking for. I’m not sure that there’s a true answer. When we talk about films like Annihilation, we need to accept that some films have multiple meanings.
I had pegged Crazy Rich Asians as Hollywood cashing in on stale plots and tropes that Hong Kong drama series had long wrung dry. Then I watched the movie and could not stop thinking about *that* scene.
The future of an animation showrunning prodigy is now clear.
Some movies are important in a big way. Like Crazy Rich Asians, a movie with the ambition and nuance to be culturally important just as it is lavish and bombastic. Then there are movies that feel important in a smaller scale. These movies are like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, a movie that delivers its importance in simple and subtle ways.
This Chinese-made animated feature is a pretty big investment for Netflix. You have to wonder why.
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