My reviews of Watcher, 892, and Call Jane, all of which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.     WATCHER Watcher is a tense, well-made thriller reminiscent of Hitchcock. The film follows Julia (Maika Monroe) a woman who has just moved to Romania with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman) for his job. Busy with work all day, Julia is left alone in her large, creaky apartment in a place she knows nothing about. She does some exploring…

    The gang behind MTV’s hit show Jackass saw their star power rise rapidly in the early 2000s. The stunt-prank-comedy show lasted three seasons and gave us hilarious and iconic skits like “Party Boy” and “The Cup Test”, and made Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Wee Man, and other members of the crew household names. Following the show’s end, they got their own movie with Jackass: The Movie, which basically played like an hour-and-a-half-long episode with…

  Moonfall is a big, dumb, insanely silly, big-budget sci-fi movie we haven’t seen in a long time. Reminiscent of end-of-the-world blockbusters from the 1990s, director Roland Emmerich has given us an explosive movie that would fit right next to the likes Armageddon or Deep Impact, yet one that also feels weirdly refreshing in today’s cinematic landscape. Moonfall has a very simple premise: what if the moon fell towards Earth? How may you ask this…

    Jim Archer’s Brian and Charles was the biggest surprise for me at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Originally not on my main list of movies to watch during the festival, I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the film and I could not be happier with my decision. This is a lovely, sweet, hilarious comedy about a man and his robot. Brian (David Earl) lives alone in a small Welsh village,…

    I’ve been attending the Sundance Film Festival for over ten years now and one of the reasons that keep me coming back to this film festival is watching the movies of emerging filmmakers and new filmmakers. I love seeing filmmakers who have been on my radar come into their own in terms of style and voice and I love seeing a new vision from a director who had never made a feature film…

    Aubrey Plaza gives the best performances of her career in Emily the Criminal, a slick, tough L.A. crime movie with shades of a Michael Mann movie. Plaza plays Emily, a woman living in Los Angeles strapped with a mountain of student debt. Unable to break into the job market because of her slight criminal record, Emily tries to make money working for a catering company where she is miserable. In a feat of…

    Akira Kurosawa’s effect on cinema is impossible to measure. Somebody could say that he was the greatest director to ever get behind the camera and it would be hard to argue with them. From his filmmaking technique to his influence on numerous genres, to the countless remakes of his films, Kurosawa’s influence looms strong even in today’s cinema and doesn’t look like it is going to stop anytime soon. The latest Kurosawa influence…

    Modern dating seems rough. With the rise in dating apps over the last few years, dating has been changed forever. With the simple swipe of a finger, you could be “matched” with a random person and choose to meet them for a date. But who really is this person? All you’ve gathered is a brief description, a picture, and maybe a small conversation about the date, but you’ve never spoken or seen this…

    Diana, Princess of Wales was not a major figure in my life. She passed away when I was only nine years old and all I knew about her was that she was a princess and that there was a Beanie Babie devoted to her. Watching the 2021 film Spencer gave me a little more context to her life, though that movie plays with the narrative and truth in different ways that it’s tough…