Memory

In reflecting on the year, a film that always comes up in my mind is Audrey Diwan’s 1960s abortion drama, Happening. Many would point to the film’s startlingly prescient release just weeks before the Dobbs…

There’s a palpable sense of “less is more” in Joanna Hogg’s brand of formalism. Her camera is happy to sit back and observe, only moving very precisely when the scene calls for it. Commonly shooting on…

Nel packs up her late father’s home while simultaneously unpacking memories of their volatile relationship.   Nick Kush: I very much admire Left Over‘s preference for small-stakes character building instead of histrionics. There are no screaming…

After Yang has one of my favorite recent open credits sequences: after a few muted back-and-forths, Jake (Colin Farrell), his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), his daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and his android Yang (Justin…

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is not a conventional documentary, though that was the original intention. Its inception started nearly forty years ago, in 1982. Robert B. Weide had just finished a well-received PBS documentary…

“The past can haunt a man,” that’s what Hugh Jackman’s Nick Bannister utters as Reminiscence — Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy’s feature directorial debut — sets itself in motion in its opening scene, soaring above a water-drowned, near-future…

Frank told a joke at work. Nobody laughed. Now at 3 am he’s unable to sleep as he obsesses over his social faux-pas, leading him to contemplate the nature of memory itself.   Nick Kush:…

In a world where a pandemic has broken out (imagine that!), Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell) must figure out how to hold onto their memories of each other as their thoughts begin to…

Identical figures perform the hopeless task of preserving blocks of ice.   Nick Kush: I love little oddballs such as Freeze Frame, wherein it appears the creator set out to try something just to see what…

We’re getting to the point where noticing similarities between a movie and the hellscape that is the current pandemic is reaching levels of self-parody. (“She Dies Tomorrow has a virus that spreads from person to…

Has a song ever reminded you of a movie? Of course it has, that’s its purpose. If the song fits well with the movie, when you hear it, a montage will play in your head…

I think I may have spoken too soon when I named Private Life the best offering from Netflix I have seen this year, because Shirkers is so good, it just blows everything else out of…