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BLACKkKLANSMAN: POTENT AND POWERFUL

Film Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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Spike Lee is an audacious filmmaker who crosses boundaries and deliberately blurs drama and reality. Never has this been more effective than in BlacKkKlansman, which defies a number of rules and offers a punch in the gut instead. The movie starts out on a light note and utilizes humor throughout, since this true story is built on a foundation of absurdity. The time is the mid-1970s. Ron Stallworth is an intelligent young man who sports an afro and volunteers to become the first black member of the Colorado Springs police force. We never learn what drives him but we do witness the astonishing results: he’s a born investigator and decides to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan, initiating the connection by phone, then using fellow officer…

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EUROPEAN CULT MOVIES

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Ron Altman. For more than 25 years I have been working my way through catalogues and IMDb entries, even Leonard Maltin’s beloved guidebook, like an explorer trekking through the jungle, to find hidden gems and treasures, unheralded movies of times long gone. When in the 1990s and early 2000s it used to mean going from video store to video store and rummaging through flea-markets for rare video tapes, the development of private torrent trackers like Karagarga and Cinemageddon has given movie lovers the chance to find out-of-print, unavailable or never-released movies and download them with the click of a mouse. Labels like the Criterion Collection have made a name for themselves releasing restored…

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TALES FROM AN AGING MOVIE WATCHER

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Jack Shipley. I took a lot of things for granted as a kid…especially my own mortality. Now, in my early forties, I realize I’m not going to live forever and its changed how I view all aspects of my life. Family is more important to me than ever while getting to the movies on opening weekend has taken a backseat. Even the way I view movies has changed. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I loved horror movies like Hellraiser, Candyman, Nightmare on Elm Street. As my responsibilities to myself and those around me have shifted, so too has my adoration for this genre. Now I raise a family of daughters in a…

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EIGHTH GRADE

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Michaela McGrath. Eighth grade was hard. Maybe harder than we’d like to remember. It’s an age where you’re still a child but you have no independence, no money and nowhere to go but the sweaty halls of middle school. It’s at times painful, hopeful, terrifying, isolating, and exciting. And Eighth Grade knows it. Burnham’s directorial debut follows Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) as she navigates the last week of her eighth-grade year. Kayla is an introverted kid who expresses who she wants to be through inspirational vlog videos. The distance between her words of wisdom and the way she actually lives her life is large, to say the least. When you’re a teenager (or…

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CHRISTOPHER ROBIN: SWEET AS HONEY

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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The word “charm” doesn’t apply to very many movies these days, but it’s precisely that quality—and an avoidance of treacly sentiment—that makes the new Disney feature Christopher Robin so enjoyable. Director Marc Forster, who piloted Finding Neverland–another story about a famous author (James M. Barrie) and his youthful creation, Peter Pan—strikes just the right note here. Ewan McGregor is perfectly cast as the title character, a harried husband and father who must learn to embrace his inner child again in order to find happiness. The characters who brought him such pleasure when he was a boy are the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood: Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga and Roo. The unfiltered directness of their emotions offer simple truths that could…

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A MONSTER CALLS (2016)

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Ashley Davis. Our story begins with twelve-year-old Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) who is struggling at school with bullies and at home with his mother’s illness. As stated in the film he’s “a boy too old to be a kid; too young to be a man.” Conor gets no respite from reality at night, as he’s haunted by dreams of his mother’s inevitable demise. His mother (Felicity Jones) is adamant that she’s getting better, but it’s clear to see this is not the case. Conor’s grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) comes to help out, telling the young man that he will have to come live with her. This is where we shift into the fantasy elements…

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ORIGINAL VS. REMAKE: THE BLOB (1958) VS. THE BLOB (1988)

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Carlo Giovannetti.  “Would you believe me if I told you there was something inside of that rock we found tonight? Something that could wipe out this whole town?” –Steve Andrews, The Blob (1958) That’s the way Steve McQueen’s character describes the title creature to the police in the original version of The Blob. The “blob” is essentially an amorphous, jelly-like creature that slithers around devouring anything in its path, while growing. However, it isn’t called the “blob” in any of the versions of the film. Instead, it is referred to as “monster”, “thing”, “parasite”, or “organism”. The shapeless creature was brought back to life for a remake, released 30 years after. Here’s a look at both films: THE…

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