The Tag-Along: Cheng Wei-hao

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-5-keeper-of-darkness-2015-the-laundryman-2015-the-tag-along-2015/82201.

4/10

The Laundryman: Lee Chung

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-5-keeper-of-darkness-2015-the-laundryman-2015-the-tag-along-2015/82201.

5/10

Keeper of Darkness: Nick Cheung

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-5-keeper-of-darkness-2015-the-laundryman-2015-the-tag-along-2015/82201.

6/10

Inside Llewyn Davis: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Thank goodness for the escaped cat subplot in Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis. Without it the film would have kinda dissipated. This is one of the Coen Brother's mood films, the ones that rely less on a coherent plot than on evoking an atmosphere or mood. Think more A Serious Man (2009) than Fargo (1996) or True Grit (2010). Really, the film frequently just seems like an excuse to string together a series of extended musical numbers. Not that I'm complaining: the music is all fantastic and fantastically performed. Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography transforms the film into one of the Coen Brother's most visually striking achievements. There are scenes in nightclubs where singers perform under single rays of light that are so beautiful they make the heart hurt. But what is the film about? In my opinion, it's about getting left behind. The eponymous Llewyn Davis always seems one step behind the times, perpetually wandering here and there in search of a break that will never come. Funny then that the character I relate the most to in this film isn't Davis but the orange tabby cat he picks up, loses, and supposedly hits with a car halfway to Chicago.

7/10

Mississippi Mermaid: Francois Truffaut

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/film-noir-faux-pas-truffauts-mississippi-mermaid/.

5/10

10 Cloverfield Lane: Dan Trachtenberg

I once joked that the reason why Dan Trachtenberg's 10 Cloverfield Lane worked could be explained with two words: John Goodman. There's a bit of truth to that; Goodman gives one of the performances of his career as the paranoid, mood-swinging survivor shelter owner. But the film has much more going for it than one exceptional performance. It's also one of the best written thrillers in recent memory. The scenarios it concocts are brilliant. The "Santa Claus" scene was so good it made me angry that I hadn't thought of something like that first. The film is tense and thrilling and somehow doesn't fall apart once the protagonist leaves the shelter.

8/10

The Bacchus Lady: E J-yong

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-4-mr-six-2015-alone-2015-the-bacchus-lady-2016/82054.

8/10

Alone: Park Hong-min

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-4-mr-six-2015-alone-2015-the-bacchus-lady-2016/82054.

7/10

Mr. Six: Guan Hu

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-4-mr-six-2015-alone-2015-the-bacchus-lady-2016/82054.

7/10

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Stanley Kramer

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/importance-of-being-sidney-poitier/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=The%20Importance%20of%20Being%20Poitier.

7/10

To Sir, with Love: James Clavell

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/importance-of-being-sidney-poitier/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=The%20Importance%20of%20Being%20Poitier.

6/10

Lilies of the Field: Ralph Nelson

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/importance-of-being-sidney-poitier/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=The%20Importance%20of%20Being%20Poitier.

9/10

What a Wonderful Family!: Yoji Yamada

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-3-creepy-2016-jagat-2015-what-a-wonderful-family-2016/81810.

7/10

Jagat: Shanjhey Kumar Peruma

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-3-creepy-2016-jagat-2015-what-a-wonderful-family-2016/81810.

8/10

Creepy: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-3-creepy-2016-jagat-2015-what-a-wonderful-family-2016/81810.

7/10

The Phenom: Noah Buschel

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-phenom-trauma-and-healing-on-the-baseball-diamond/81746.

8/10

Les Cowboys: Thomas Bidegain

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-les-cowboys-a-passable-french-update-of-an-american-classic/81742.

6/10

Finding Dory: Andrew Stanton

Andrew Stanton's Finding Dory is nice. It's cute and charming, but there ultimately isn't too much in it that you can't find in other Pixar films. That's still a high metric, mind you. A mediocre Pixar film is still much better than your average animated fair. But I guess I just wish that there could have been more to this film. The last act is almost identical to the one from Toy Story 2 (1999) just with the jet plane to Japan replaced with a truck to Cleveland. Poor Albert Brooks sounded like he was going to collapse in the middle of each of his lines. Still, the animation was beautiful and some of the new characters, particularly Hank the red octopus and the sea lions, were a lot of fun. Also, despite my gripes, the scene where Dory actually finds her parents in the middle of the circle of shells was probably the best stand-alone scene Pixar has done since the end of Toy Story 3 (2010): perfectly timed, perfectly executed, emotionally magnificent.

7/10

Vigilante Diaries: Christian Sesma

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-vigilante-diaries-offensive-and-offensively-bad-on-every-level/81680.

2/10

Seattle Road: Ryan David

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-seattle-road-one-of-the-worst-kinds-of-bad-movie/81671.

3/10

Cinderella: Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella is at its very best when it embraces its fairy tale origins, when its costumes are at their boldest and flashiest, when their sets are at their most lavish, when the emotions are cranked up to 11 and people are able to talk about things like Kindness and Courage without any irony. The clumsiest parts were when it tried to deconstruct its fairy tale logic: why the stepmother is so cruel; trying to add sincere political intrigue to the Prince getting married to a commoner. But overall the film is a surprisingly earnest, good-hearted re-envisioning of Disney's original film. It's strange, but the overbearing CGI animals and over-the-top makeup (especially on Helena Bonham Carter's disguised Fairy Godmother) work with the fairy tale aesthetic. The occasional snatches of music from the original film were nice touches, too.

7/10

The Boys Who Cried Wolf: Kim Jin-hwang

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-2-grace-2016-the-boys-who-cried-wolf-2016/81625.

3/10

Grace: Pun Homchuen, Onusa Donsawai

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-2-grace-2016-the-boys-who-cried-wolf-2016/81625.

8/10

Warcraft: Duncan Jones

How best to explain how and why Duncan Jones' Warcraft sucks? How about that it feels like the Council of Elrond scenes in the The Fellowship of the Rings (2001) juxtaposed with the Battle of Gondor scenes in The Return of the King (2003)? And while there are explanations for why Character A goes to Area B to do such-and-such as the plot requires, very little of it feels connected; almost none of it carries any dramatic weight. Places, people, and locations are thrown onto the screen with less care, consideration, and explanation than in the Star Wars prequels. It's all just a haze of terrible CGI locations, terrible CGI characters, and terrible CGI effects.

3/10

The Priests: Jang Jae-hyun

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-1-the-bodyguard-2016-the-priests-2015/81484.

8/10

The Bodyguard: Yue Song

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyaff-round-up-1-the-bodyguard-2016-the-priests-2015/81484.

4/10

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Mike Nichols

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/whos-afraid-virginia-woolf-50/.

9/10

Wise Blood: John Huston

[Revisit Review]

Every shot in John Huston's Wise Blood is starkly reticent. Yet each shot communicates so much. If you were born or raised in the South, then you understand how much this film nails the South, its culture, and the FEEL of living there. Ned Beatty was perfect and Brad Dourif seemed possessed—in a good way. Admittedly, it has some of the same problems as the novel—it feels disjointed, particularly concerning Enoch Emory's sub-plot.

8/10

My Love, Don't Cross That River: Jin Mo-young

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-my-love-dont-cross-that-river-love-life-and-loss-in-the-korean-mountains/81082.

8/10

The Last Heist: Mike Mendez

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-last-heist-serially-confused/81020.

4/10

The Conjuring 2: James Wan

Saw THE CONJURING 2. Scary flick, but had some major problems, especially that awful scene w/ the dog. You know the one.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

Also, did anybody else notice that the Demon's name was spelled out w/ big letters on the Warren's bookshelf in the first act? Nice touch.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

The film has 2 big problems. 1st, for a film "based on a true story" it takes every opportunity to overload itself w/ CGI nonsense.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

2nd, it imagines a presumptive neutrality towards the legitimacy of the case...at the same time nun demons throw people against walls.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

This film isn't THE EXORCIST. Stop having characters question the legitimacy of the supernatural when it's staring them in the face.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

.@AE_DavidS I mean, I liked the film. But I cringed each time that Willie Wonka demon with the candy cane umbrella showed up.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

Huh. Which begs the question why in the heck did he look so fake? https://t.co/xAT7nxqTn3

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 17, 2016

6/10

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping: Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone

I really wished I liked Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone's Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping as much as everybody else seems to. I like The Lonely Island and I've always enjoyed Andy Samberg as an actor. But this film just isn't funny. See, here's the problem: it's a comedic mockumentary that knows it's a comedic mockumentary. The film pauses several times to make sure that the audience got certain jokes: an off-screen character will repeat the punchline, somebody involved will narrate what just happened. Unlike This Is Spinal Tap (1984), which has been repeatedly compared to Popstar, it never feels like any of these characters could actually be real. None of the music is particularly interesting either, something especially egregious considering how much unironic love the music in This Is Spinal Tap gets. Still, it was worth it just to see Martin Sheen punch Andy Samberg in the face.

5/10

Overlord: Stuart Cooper

[Revisit Review]

Stuart Cooper's Overlord isn't really about the Normandy Landings. It isn't even really about war, although it uses World War Two as a framework. It's about the feeling of dread and inescapable fate, of the inevitability of death, of the meaninglessness of life's totality. Perhaps that's why I connect with it so much at this time in my life when I'm so unhappy with where I am emotionally, financially, and mentally.

10/10

Love & Friendship: Whit Stillman

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship. I don't particularly enjoy the works of Jane Austen or British period pieces. But this film really clicked for me. I think the main reason is the story itself which focuses on the cruel, bitchy characters who usually only exist on the periphery of Austen's novels like Fanny Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility and Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice. Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) is a delicious monster; you can practically feel the blood in your chest rise whenever she appears onscreen. I had some trouble following the film for the first 20 minutes, though. It introduced too many characters too quickly with too little introduction.

7/10

Midnight Special: Jeff Nichols

A lot of filmmakers are too intimidated by nighttime shooting to invest much in it. So many of them either don't shoot at night or cheat with techniques like day-for-night. Not Jeff Nichols. The majority of Midnight Special is at night with many of the shots almost completely opaque with blackness. It shows a lot of courage and talent. I'm a bit more enamored with the cinematography than I am with the film itself. It's a good recycling of Spielberg's material and style, particularly Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). But it's not much more than a pastiche. The sparsity of the dialogue reminds me a bit of Cormac McCarthy, particularly his novel The Road. But the reticence of the dialogue doesn't necessarily distract me from the fact that I'm seeing Nichols imitate somebody else instead of saying something new.

7/10

Now You See Me 2: Jon M. Chu

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-now-you-see-me-2-the-magic-is-gone/80528.

5/10

Now You See Me: Louis Leterrier

Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me caught me off guard at first: I tweeted that I would have loved it if it hadn't been edited like a Michael Bay movie. See, Now You See Me is about magicians/illusionists. But it never allows the magic tricks/illusions to actually occur organically onscreen--they're all achieved either through CGI or heavy-handed editing. But then I realized that the tricks themselves were moot. They are the vehicle through which the film achieves its tremendous heist plot. I know a lot of critics didn't like this film, but I thought it had an amazing screenplay. I loved the characters, particularly how they filled traditional archetypes: illusionist, mentalist, street magician, escape artist. I loved Mark Ruffalo's character despite feeling his twist was a bit forced. This was a good film. I hope the sequel can live up to it.

7/10

The World of Henry Orient: George Roy Hill

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/the-world-of-henry-orient/.

8/10

10 Rillington Place: Richard Fleischer

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/richard-attenborough-10-rillington-place/.

6/10

Lifeforce: Tobe Hooper

Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce is certainly one of the more ambitious films to crawl out of Cannon Films' 80s catalogue. Most films try to stick to one genre. But Lifeforce begins as an alien invasion film, becomes supernatural horror, and somehow ends up as a zombie flick. It's a mess, but a fun mess. The plot doesn't much sense, and neither does the lore. But there's just so much effort put on screen: effort in the effects, effort in the atmosphere, effort in the scope they were trying to achieve. Many of the film's images have lodged themselves into my brain: the astronauts flying through a greenish haze in outer space towards the derelict spacecraft, the discovery of the suspended vampire bodies, the first time one of the drained corpses comes back to life in the operating room, the blue phantasms of the eponymous "lifeforce" swirling over London.

7/10

The Angry Birds Movie: Clay Kaytis, Fergal Reilly

I went into The Angry Birds Movie expecting to think it's be one of the worst films I'd see all year. I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, it still sucked. But it was palpable. A lot of the humor sucked, but I'll be damned if I didn't laugh a few times. The part at the end where the Bird community came together to give Red a new house made me a bit misty-eyed. Also, I genuinely enjoyed the three main Birds: Red, Chuck, and Bomb. They had good comedic chemistry and their scenes climbing the mountain to find the Great Eagle actually worked. The movie was still the equivalent of dangling car keys in front of an infant's face, but I didn't detest it.

5/10

A Scanner Darkly: Richard Linklater

I actually decided to read the original novel by Philip K. Dick before giving Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly a watch. To my delight, Linklater's film rivals only Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002) as the best onscreen depiction of Dick's paranoiac sensibilities. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) is a masterpiece, but it substitutes the original novel's proto-cyberpunk anxieties with neo-noir chic (although he did preserve the post-humanist undercurrents). A Scanner Darkly masterfully replicates the dread and emptiness of the life of communal addicts--at least according to Dick's description. Truth be told, though, I didn't like to last 20 minutes. Donna's last scene cried out for cross-cutting with Bob Arctor's discovery of the true source of Substance D. Also, Keanu Reeves' performance in the last few minutes was woefully lacking. He played these scenes almost exactly like he did the rest of the film. I didn't buy him being a near-catatonic, brain-dead addict.

7/10

The Spoils Before Dying: Matt Piedmont, Andrew Steele

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/tv-review-the-spoils-before-dying/79742.

6/10

Ikarie XB-1: Jindřich Polák

Jindřich Polák's Ikarie XB-1 is a revelation. Seeing it now is like discovering the well-spring from which science fiction films got their visual stylistics from for the next several decades. If the cinema spent the 30s, 40s, and 50s imitating Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), you can see the same impact from Ikarie XB-1 on such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977), and even Alien (1979): cramped ship interiors; impersonal geometric designs; spaceships waltzing through empty cosmos. The plot may be episodic, but the whole stays congealed thanks to solid atmospherics nearly as sterile as the environments the characters inhabit. It's both a mood piece and an intriguing bit of science fiction. This is a film I must revisit in the future.

9/10