I am a film enthusiast and critic in Grand Rapids, Michigan who started writing on my film blog, RJG Film Analysis, and co-hosting The Cinema Breakdown podcast. One day, I'll watch the perfect movie while drinking the perfect beer...until then, I'll have to settle by watching "Lost in Translation" with a Rochefort 10.
You may have noticed that your entertainment experiences have been changing recently. More than likely, it’s been happening gradually enough you hardly even think about it. Yet, when more and more people want to watch movies now, they circumvent the expensive, loud, mall-esque experience of their local cineplex to simply pull up an Amazon …
Childhoods forged in war, rather than peace. Actions predicated on survival, rather than choice. These are the assumptions seen in many films about those who are displaced or consumed by violence, particularly those in West Africa. In Beasts of No Nation, Cary Fukunaga’s third feature film, the specific geography is…
In what is the first time I can remember the title cards of a film be given voiceover narration treatment (though I’m sure it’s happened before), David Thorpe, a filmmaker based in New York City, gives us our first introduction to the topic at hand: his voice. We soon learn that by cultural, certain academics, and even Thorpe’s standards …
There’s a lot of potential for outbursts in Cartel Land, Matthew Heineman’s documentary about power, community, and violence in the Mexican Drug trade. Every once in awhile these fireworks break out and develop into shootouts on crowded streets and the unwarranted storming of houses. Cruelty of the worst kind makes its …
Laurie Anderson’s personal essay Heart of a Dog is relentlessly intimate, almost to an unknowable extent. It’s a lament of sorrow, but specifically the type of melancholy that’s refracted through a lens of childlike questioning, a tone that’s held consistently between her thoughts on death and also public surveillance. These two distant topics …
It’s easy to be disillusioned by the hypnotic structure of Experimenter, the latest film from director Michael Almereyda. Spanning over a decade from social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s (Peter Sarsgaard) breakout experiment in 1961, this film mashes together formal elements of budget filmmaking and old-school stage design …
At the end of We Won’t Grow Old Together, Maurice Pialat’s second feature film, all the leading players have said a kind of goodbye to one another. Not the kind of farewell that marks the beginning of a long absence, but rather the kind we’ve become used to during the film: lead actor Jean Yanne as Jean, a filmmaker, doesn’t let those around …
To fully understand and enjoy Jafar Panahi’s three latest projects, it is strongly suggested to become versed in his current legal circumstances. The Iranian director has made an unofficial trilogy of “non-films” since the instatement of his 20-year ban on filmmaking by his country’s government, and like the first two, Taxi stands as a piece of protest art …
In any other movie about transgender sex workers searching for revenge on the streets of Los Angeles, our way into this world would likely be Razmik (Karren Karagulian), the Armenian cab driver who occasionally drives into the world of Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) for an escape. We might learn about his efforts to hide this part of his life from his wife and young daughter and later observe as he reconciles his desires and those around him who have traveled to a foreign country with.
Madame Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska) suffers from depression. At least, we’re kinda pretty maybe sure about that. The 1856 novel (also named Madame Bovary) on which the film is based never really specifies, instead putting emphasis on her boredom with the daily life of a housewife, covertly implying what a psychological reading of the text might eventually uncover. After marrying small-town doctor …