Nicolas Cage is in fact a very good actor. That might sound like it goes without saying, or it might not, but it does help to have the reminder: after something like a quarter of a century building an ever- grander persona as a goofy, kitschy weirdo, prone to glowering and bellowing and twitchy, almost […]
In the early parts of Mainstream, it appears that producer, director, and co-writer (with Tom Stuart) Gia Coppola was really anxious to make her own version of Aunt Sofia’s The Bling Ring. It is not very good at this, and also, by the time the film’s glacially-paced 94 minutes are over, this will seem like the […]
In the winter 2021 model Liam Neeson Action Thriller, The Marksman, Neeson plays a character named Jim Hanson, and this distracted me enough that I’m suppose it would have been a huge bother even if the film was better. Or also if it was worse. The point is, Jim Hanson is just, I’m sorry, an […]
Just explaining the concept of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets potentially constitutes a spoiler to the sufficiently way reader, so I guess the best way to start is to say: if you are a lover of human beings, this is a film for you. And if there is any shred of justice in this world, filmmaking […]
You may think that this is a straight rip-off of American Psycho, and in some ways you may be right. But this is a woman’s tale. We women are having a moment right now, and this is what we call in Hollywood, an “elevated story concept,” AKA, “the same, but different.” So shut the fuck […]
Language Lessons is the newest entry in the “screen life” genre, which was already gaining traction before 2020. By this I mean movies that are depicted entirely through the characters interacting with a computer screen, à la Unfriended or Searching. Last year’s horror flick Host was obviously an early adopter, but I imagine over the […]
A review requested by STinG, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! The path that Samurai Cop has taken through history is close enough to the path of Miami Connection […]
A review requested by Kevin, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! I liked I ♥ Huckabees in 2004, and would most likely have given it a 4/5 review then; […]
Cowboys is the latest entry in a subgenre that is certainly interesting to explore: LGBTQ Americana, which has been witnessed in pop culture as far ranging as Brokeback Mountain to that cowboy guy from Village People. The wrenching of the cowboy from the cold dead hands of toxic masculinity has long been a subject of […]
Minari won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and this is extraordinarily appropriate. It checks all the boxes of a stereotypical Sundance indie so hard that I almost can’t think of the last film to check them harder (not even the 2021 winner of […]
Land is a movie as simple and unprepossessing as its magnificently anonymous title. The film, the directorial debut of its star, Robin Wright, is not built for surprise: it takes a character, gives her an unspoken but extremely clear emotional trauma, and lets her work it out over the course of the film’s running. Which […]
CODA is unbearably cloying and contains barely a single narrative beat that isn’t an ossified cliché. Naturally, it has been greeted with rave reviews and a spirited bidding war in the wake of its opening-night premiere at the Sundance Film Festival; elevating sentimental schlock made with little more than the most functional artistry has been […]
