Talking About Trees, a fascinating Sudanese documentary, follows four movie directors (Ibrahim Shadad, Manor Al Hilo, Suleiman Mohamed Ibrahim, and Altayeb Mahdi), so called members of a group called the Sudanese Film Club, as they try to open a movie theater in Omdourman, near Khatoum. It quickly becomes evident that this is no easy task in an Islamist-run country whose leaders for decades have made the public viewing of films a very difficult task indeed. The documentary explores the cultural…

Another great entry into the Quentin Tarantino canon, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" yet again presents clever storytelling and visually stunning camerawork which Tarantino's fans have come to expect from his movies. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, veteran Tarantino actors well versed in his style, are great playing a dynamic duo, one a fading Hollywood actor and the other his stunt double. They have to navigate through the ever changing world of Hollywood. The movie contains Tarantino's signature violence,…

Letterboxd Season Challenge 2018-2019

Week 22: February 17th-23rd
Oscars Week

Alfonso Cuarón has made the film of his career with his latest masterpiece, Roma. This movie focuses on Cleo, played brilliantly by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, a young woman of Mixteco descent who works as a nanny for a large, affluent family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in the early 1970s. The movie takes place during a time of personal and political unrest. The trials and tribulations of the…

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs sees the Coen brothers making an old fashioned Western anthology. The movie is a collection of stories or vignettes that take place in the Wild West each containing different tones and actors, but all dealing with death. Some of the vignettes are better than others, but all feature first rate storytelling, stunningly beautiful cinematography, excellent acting, and a great score. Too bad this pretty much went straight to Netflix because I would have loved to…