Harsh Texture

  • 10 Cloverfield Lane
    Playing like a better-than-average episode of a TV sci fi serial, and with a better than average heavy in John Goodman, 10 Cloverfield Lane is still a bit awkward when it has to live up to genre demands. The Cloverfield series may require a healthy dose of sci fi but the film worked best as a stripped-down thriller.
  • Hidden Figures
    Hidden Figures traces the desegregation effort at NASA, at a time when the space race between the USSR and USA was at a fever pitch.
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
    A misguided attempt at investigating one of the most consequential humans to ever live instead devolves into a painfully-typical white savior story, and a vanity project for its star
  • Lucy
    Lucy is a pretty good actioner that gives Scarlett Johansson ample room to flex her star power. Director Luc Besson spends almost as much energy on propping up the films' ridiculous conceit with psycho-babble, even drafting Morgan Freeman to make it more palatable.
  • Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
    Hayao Miyazaki's first masterpiece finds the director working on his own original characters and story for the first time. What follows are many of the director's hallmarks: war as mankind's greatest folly; a great love for nature; and a supernaturally talented young girl making up for the sins of her forebears. Miyazaki wasn't working with large budgets and he showed a great debt to his influences. Still its thrilling to see an artist work unbounded for the first time.
  • Selma
    Ava DuVernay's recounting of the march on the Edmund Pettus bridge and all of the various groups that participated or antagonized it. Its a remarkably bloody period of the Civil Rights struggle, and Selma is best in the harrowing passages that highlight the high stakes and casualties. As a character study of Martin Luther King however, the film falls short
  • Halloween 2018
    Retconning away all the previous sequels, 2018's Halloween exists as a direct continuation of the 1976 original. Michael Myers has spent the ensuing decades following his muder spree back under supervision of a mental hospital. Meanwhile Laurie Strode has prepared tirelessly for his return, to the detriment of her family. Another botched prisoner transfer sets Michael loose once again...
  • Springsteen On Broadway
    Springsteen On Broadway couldn't be called "Bruce Comes Clean". Springsteen shares stories about his life that trace his youth to adulthood. Despite plenty of anecdotes the man seems as inscrutable as ever. Director Thom Zimny similarly keeps the production low-key and straightforward.
  • Hard Target
    In 1993 John Woo and Jean Claude Van Damme had a lot to prove. Van Damme was desperate to break out of the video store and establish himself as a box office A-Lister. Meanwhile no major talent from Hong Kong had managed to translate their success in Hollywood. John Woo was anxious to buck the trend. Both men threw everything they had into Hard Target, though not regarded as either's best work it remains a very fun and ambitious entry in their filmographies.
  • Bad Times at the El Royal
    On this dark and stormy night a group of strangers spend the night in a Hotel haunted by the past. Bad Times at the El Royal is fun cinema if more of a confection than an engaging film. If it has substance at all its in its exhumation of the late 60s