Film section editor at DigBoston.
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9to5: The Story of a Movement 2020
Labor activism defines 9to5, but isn’t necessarily what makes it engaging. Which poses the question, what does it have for the already converted audience? First, it’s a vital piece of previously unreported Boston history, correctly prioritizing specific details over generalized platitudes. Second, the editing’s clean and intuitive enough to pursue that piece of history across other regions and decades of time without losing sight of the specific people and particular motivations that started it off. And third are the interviews…
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Better Luck Tomorrow 2002
Very perceptive at dramatizing moments where teenagers’ performances of masculinity and maturity inadvertently melt into something more fraught and real. Like when a study group suddenly gains a sexual undercurrent neither party knows how to deal with (Shen and Cheung are beautiful as two people who are both too anxious to start hooking up with each other), or when a fight at a house party gets a little too edgy for even the fighters involved. And the performances match that…
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Nobody 2021
During the first quarter of 2021 the only film that a major studio released exclusively to theaters was Nobody, where Bob Odenkirk's an ex-Blackwater type living life like a schnook with a wife and kids. His rock bottom comes when he makes an informed decision to defuse a robbery instead of Zahler'ing the intruders, so the rest depicts him reclaiming his manhood by killing a good 50 or so “bad guys," making Nobody a movie about the deep shame of…
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The Empty Man 2020
Legitimately humbling experience to watch this and whole time be thinking this is clearly among the first examples of Twin Peaks (2017)-influenced cinema only to find that actually The Empty Man was on the shelf for so long that it was already being shot around the same time Twin Peaks was airing. Like a displaced reflection—see you at the curtain call.
