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| SUMMER OF SOUL (...OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) |
"An experience worth remembering."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED VIA INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON 2021: "Summer of Soul" isn't quite a concert film, but it's hard to blame director Ahmir-Khalib "Questlove" Thompson for never wanting to stop the music: The raw material is a treasure trove of great performances not seen in fifty years, and more often than not, they say just as much on their own as anybody talking about them later might. The trick, which Questlove, editor Joshua L. Pearson, and the rest of the crew pull off nicely, is to insert just enough present-day reminiscences to give a little bit of context without slowing the party down." (more)
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| WRATH OF MAN |
"Vengeance is Mine"
alejandroariera says... "Guy Ritchie is one those directors that I am hot and cold about. Like many, I was blown away by his hyper clever, hyper violent feature debut “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” (1998), even though I couldn’t make sense of at least 40% of the dialogue (it’s those damn cockney accents, you know). And then came “Snatch” (2000), which tried to be twice as clever and incomprehensible as his first feature (mumbling Brad Pitt in full Irish brogue included) and “Swept Away” (2002), his failed (and I am being nice here) remake of the Lina Wertmuller classic starring his then-companion Madonna. With just three films, Ritchie managed to jump the shark in an epic way. I pretty much skipped the work that followed until the release of the first of the two Sherlock Holmes movies he directed for Robert Downey, Jr. The less said about its take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s character the better, although I did like the second one: it was much closer to the spirit of the classic novels and stories, and it had in Jared Harris one of the best Moriarty’s to ever grace the bog and small screens. But then Ritchie decided to trample all over my childhood memories of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” by turning his remake into a damn origin story with no sense of what made the pairing of agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin so unique and charming and cool and fun. That was my last Guy Ritchie movie until today." (more)
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| TOUCH (2021) |
"Don't Forget To Drink Lots Of Water"
Erik Childress says... "American films, particularly remakes, often fall into the trap of trying to one-up its originals by providing more generic thrills or happy endings. The nuance of a more enriching study of culture or character falling victim to the more palatable devices of a screenwriter with no imagination – or too much. Well, sometimes that happens abroad too. Case in point – Aleksandra Szczepanowska’s Touch which she wrote, directed and stars in opens with the promise of something deeper, illuminating and even sensual and then falls down a wormhole into the days when Fatal Attraction reduxes were all the rage. Touch is all the more ironic in that the film begins with an exploration of identity and then has so much trouble finding one itself." (more)
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| MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) |
"Finish him."
Lybarger says... "Twenty-four years ago, I had to sit through the follow up to one of the few successful movies based on a video game. Like its predecessor, it lacked the grisly violence of the game, but it had nothing to offer that could replace it." (more)
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