Reconstructing the last day in a man’s life was the difficult task put to director Ryan Coogler with Fruitvale Station. The events leading up to Oscar Grant’s untimely death on New Year’s Day 2009 is the basis for the story, the sensationalized media frenzy that came afterwards is left out of Fruitvale Station, giving the […]
Rants & Raves
LAFF Film Review: ‘Europa Report’ Will Make Science Fiction Fans Euphoric (Dir. Sebastián Cordero 2013 USA)
Found footage has a secure home in horror movies, and with Europa Report the science fiction genre gets its best found footage film to date. From director Sebastián Cordero, his first English-language film Europa Report tells the story of a privately funded space mission to one of Jupiter’s Moons. The hope of the crew, and […]
LAFF Film Review: ‘Concussion’ (Dir. Stacie Passon 2013 USA)
The unhappy, bored housewife dilemma is no longer confined to narrative storytelling about heterosexual couples thanks to Concussion, a movie that gets a great deal of things right with representation, but falters when it comes to the scandalous underbelly of its story. “After 40, you have to choose between your face and your ass.”–the […]
LAFF Film Review: ‘Delivery’ (Dir. Brian Netto 2013 USA)
The blessed event of pregnancy, made unforgettably horrifying in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, has found yet another outlet to promote birth control with first-time Director Brian Netto’s Delivery. Written by Netto and Adam Schindler, Delivery uses the found-footage motif to tell the story of Kyle and Rachel Massy’s road to parenthood, as the stars of […]
Alice Winocour’s ‘Augustine’ Has Commitment And Quiet Charisma From The Stars; It’s Just Not Very Interesting
Augustine is one of the harder sorts of films to write about, being handsomely mounted, with appealing leads and an interesting story, a minimum of pandering or condescension towards the audience, and fully aware of the ramifications of its subject matter. The problem is, it’s just not very interesting. Augustine was a patient of […]
