Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (2022) - Movie Review

Alejandro G. Iñarritu, who we last checked in with way back at the start of 2016 with The Revenant, now joins Branagh, Gray, and Spielberg in releasing a film this year that comes with a heavy dose of autobiography. I can understand how wanky this can come across to some people, having a filmmaker devote so many hours to their own story (with varying degrees of varnish), but as an auteurist, there’s something I find quite fascinating about these kinds of productions. They take the idea of film as a personal form of art (ignoring how each and every film is the result of collaboration in one form or another) about as far as it can go while still being in the context of a work of fiction. And with this film, we find the director… well, in a pretty dark place.

Book Of Love (2022) - Movie Review

I’m not sure what I was hoping to get out of this. I mean, it’s a cheesetastic rom-com with a very specific audience that I am in no way a part of; even with my usual willingness to watch just about anything, I went into this mainly as just a means to get out of the house for a bit. But as I sat in that cinema, completely alone, I came face to face with a film that managed an admittedly impressive gambit of being both unfathomably boring and infuriating to sit through.

Roma (2018) - Movie Review

Before getting into this film, I want to show you all something:

That video was made in collaboration with Autism Speaks, an organisation that, for me and many other autistics, has become emblematic of just how much work needs to be done when it comes to autism awareness. It shows a level of sickening propaganda that it has also become an emblem of how we see the world perceiving us. It’s frankly hard to sit through without feeling like a pariah on one’s own planet. And it was directed by one Alfonso Cuarón, director of Y Tu Mamá También, Children Of God, Gravity and a bunch of other work more worth having one’s name attached to than this shit.

I bring all this up because, as I get into his latest effort, know that I am struggling with trying to separate his place as a genuine cinematic marvel with his culpability in something that haunts the autism movement to this day, especially since that very video is one of the reasons why I’m an advocate for the cause in the first place: I don’t want this shit hanging around and making things harder for me and others.

Okay, rant over: Let’s actually get into the film itself.

Coco (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) wants to become a famous musician like his hero Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), something made difficult by how Miguel’s family have expressly forbidden any of them getting involved in music. However, when Miguel finds himself in the Land Of The Dead on the night of Dia de los Muertos, his struggle between his dreams and his family is about to get even more complicated as he discovers that he and Ernesto might have a lot more in common than he first thought.

Sicario (2015) - Movie Review

In today’s day and age where people have grown more and more sceptical of their nation’s military and government (rightfully so, in most regards), the question of how they justify their actions has grown in poignancy. This is especially true in the world of entertainment, where the times when propaganda pieces about the 'Red Menace' are long since behind us. There’s a reason why action films involving soldiers rescuing hostages in foreign jungle settings aren’t nearly as prevalent, and it’s not just because they mostly suck the big one: Violence with lack of justification, when it comes to government-sanctioned officers, isn’t nearly as accepted as it once mystifyingly was. One look at the works of Kathryn Bigelow and Clint Eastwood will see this mindset in full force, where actions are constantly brought into question and that lingering question hangs over everyone’s heads. Today, it’s time to dip into that pool once again.