The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C- I don’t know what the fuck this movie is or who it was made for. Hipsters, maybe, I don’t know. On the surface, French Exit seems like another entry in one of my least favorite genres: award-grabbing dramas with little plot about characters that amount to nothing but an odd collection […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+ I have a soft spot for Chinese fantasy films. While I often have no fucking clue what’s happening in terms of plot, Chinese movies are rarely boring and A Writer’s Odyssey is a solid example. Does it make sense? Hell no. Do bizarre plot elements appear and disappear without explanation? Hell […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C Let’s just get this out of the way: this movie isn’t for me. My knowledge mainly lies with horror, action and exploitation movies, so a British melodrama about a gay couple struggling with dementia isn’t exactly my cup of tea. But the combination of awards season and the pandemic means that […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D I knew that I was in trouble when Nomadland opened with the proclamation that it won the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice Film Festival. For the unaware, the Venice Film Festival is a place for pretentious asshats to pretend to like boring movies in order to impress […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+ Between Fatale and The Little Things, 2021 feels a lot like the 90s so far. In this case, I mean that both literally and figuratively. The Little Things is set in the 90s and that’s not an artistic choice; it was actually written in the 90s and the script has been […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C Some people mark the passage of time by the changing of the seasons; from the first chill on an Autumn night that warns of the coming winter to the first sunny afternoon in Spring that brings promise of the long, hot days ahead. I instead mark the passage of time with […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B- This is another case where I had never heard of a movie prior to heading to the theater to see it, but it was the only thing playing that I hadn’t seen and that seemed to make it my best option. Fortunately, while it’s nothing groundbreaking, there are far worse ways […]
I love certain kinds of westerns, usually ones starring Clint Eastwood and/or directed by an Italian because you can always rely on the Italians to transform a mundane genre into an orgy of graphic violence. Unfortunately, News of the World does not come from that school of western thought. No, News of the World comes […]
I don’t know much about Martin McDonagh (the writer/director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), but I bet that he is a really, really big fan of Fargo. In terms of plot, this film doesn’t specifically have many similarities to Fargo, but it does try to emulate the tone and themes of that […]
The trailers for Promising Young Woman promised a rape-revenge film and I figured that could go one of two ways. It could be an artsy feminist film or it could go the route of gritty exploitation, along the lines of something like I Spit on Your Grave or Ms. 45. If you’re familiar with […]