Anora Big Winner at 97th Oscars

Anora The Big Winner of the 97th Oscars

Sean Baker‘s Palme d’Or-winner dramedy Anora won the 97th Oscars, taking home five statues for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Director, Best Actress for Mikey Madison, and Best Picture. In his acceptance speech for Best Director, Sean Baker called for preserving the theatrical movie viewing experience. Movie theaters, especially independently owned theaters, are struggling,…

The Brutalist

The Brutalist

A Jewish Hungarian architect immigrates to the United States after the Second World War in The Brutalist. In 1947, Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) emigrates from Budapest to Philadelphia, where he is taken in by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his wife Audrey (Emma Laird). While awaiting word of when his wife Erzsébet…

See How They Run

See How They Run

A police inspector and rookie police constable investigate a murder after the 100th performance of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” in See How They Run. Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) is a sleazy American film director hired by producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith) to direct a film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” which just celebrated the…

Blonde

Blonde

A fictionalized version of the life of Marilyn Monroe is told in Blonde. As a child, Norma Jeane Mortenson was traumatized by the mental breakdown of her mother, Gladys Baker (Julianne Nicholson), leaving Norma to pine for the father she never knew. A decade later, Norma (Ana de Armas) is on the rise as blonde…

The French Dispatch

The French Dispatch

Wes Anderson presents us with an obituary, travel guide, and 3 featured articles from a fiction magazine in The French Dispatch. Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray) was found dead of an apparent heart attack while preparing the final issue of his magazine “The French Dispatch,” a supplement of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun, detailing life…

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Director Wes Anderson returns with this star studded film about a famous European hotel.  An author (Tom Wilkinson) recites a story about the time his younger self (Jude Law) visited the, formerly exquisite, Grand Budapest Hotel, in the Republic of Zubrowka, and spoke with its current owner Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) about his history…

Love, Marilyn

Love, Marilyn

More than fifty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most infamous of Hollywood tragedies.  Even though she had a very high ambition to succeed as an actress, she fell victim to typecasting and substance abuse.  There have been countless biographies about Marilyn over the years, with the most recent example being…

High School

High School

High School is a stoner comedy about two teenagers, who decide to get their entire high school stoned on pot brownies in order to mess up the results of a drug test set up by the very strict headmaster (played by a nearly unrecognizable Michael Chiklis). The problem with many stoner comedies is that if you are not…

Predators

Predators

After twenty years (and two Alien vs. Predator films), the Predator series finally returns with a stand-alone installment.  While film critics are quick to add the “reboot” buzzword to most new films from classic franchises, it is obvious that this film is meant to be a modern day sequel to the original 1987 film (and there’s even…

Splice

Splice

Well, I am back in Canada and for my first film back I decided to see what can already be considered a Canadian success story (by the fact that it is a rare example of a Canadian film with an American distributor). Splice is a film by Vincenzo Natali, who is probably best known for…