It was a terrific year in film, and while box office receipts for adult-oriented pictures took quite a hit this awards season with the majority of potential Oscar contenders grossing less than $10m each, the high bar quality of 2022 releases made creating a…
Read MoreI always hesitate to create a “worst” movies of the year list as films are generally so difficult to make that it is a wonder any ever get completed, and the achievements of artists who have, with passion, purpose and good intentions, poured everything…
Read MoreBabylon Goes Big: Damien Chazelle’s Exposé of Tinseltown in Transition is Pure Cinema
More is much more in Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s mammoth period ode to a Hollywood in transition circa 1927 and plunge into gleeful debauchery, mad invention and wild excess. In a movie bound to divide audiences, adventurous cineastes will love Chazelle’s go-for-broke, enfant terrible provocation…
Read MoreJames Cameron’s Breathtaking Avatar: The Way of Water, is an Extraordinarily Realized Vision
A now-familiar skeptics’ refrain tends to follow James Cameron during the run ups to his often game-changing pictures—they are too expensive and rife with cost overruns that will bankrupt their studios; their onset dynamics are ruled by “king of the world” megalomania; that he…
Read MoreIt’s been some time since filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has resembled the promise of his early auteur status, cemented by his striking 1998 debut puzzle Pi and peaking more than a decade later (and ago) with 2010’s diabolical Black Swan. Say what you will, but…
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