Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022) - Movie Review

2022 seems to be the year where a lot of filmmakers got super-nostalgic and wanted to share that with their audiences. This will mark the fourth film I’ve looked at in the last twelve months involving a director dramatising their childhood, and the fifth involving a director dramatising themselves in general. Except what Richard Linklater has put together here goes further into the fictionalised side of things than his contemporaries, as it starts out with Stanley (Milo Coy) being picked out of the school yard by NASA to be part of their space program, but then reveals itself to be much less fantastical than that would imply.

The Fabelmans (2022) - Movie Review

It has basically become a running joke in film geek circles about how much of Steven Spielberg’s filmography involves him fixating on his own parents. Filtered through the kind of industry-defining vision that would make him one of the medium’s most important figures, his films irrespective of genre have involved a lot of father/son conflicts, mourning the loss of connection with family, and just a general sense of unrest concerning authority figures. For decades, Spielberg has been using his complicated feelings about his parents’ divorce to define and later redefine what is now known as the ‘blockbuster’.

And now, it seems that he is ready to stop dancing around the subject, and just make a film about that event in his life... albeit with still a thin layer of fictionalisation, although still the thinnest that he’s applied yet. What comes out of it is not only Spielberg’s best work in years, but something that feels like it had to make.

Lizzie (2020) - Movie Review

This is a cinematic pairing that is so blindingly obvious that it really should have happened before this point. Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny: Both indie darlings, both internationally seasoned, both chaotic queer in presence, both utter joys to see in just about anything (hell, even hindsight gives Stewart’s Bella a certain ironic pleasure). And when paired up for a rather iconic piece of gory American folklore, along with a director who got his feature-length kickstart with backing from Spectrevision… hell yeah, am I excited that this finally got a release over here.