95
"We don't deserve the impossible."
After months of being shrouded in mystery, Nope finally breaks out of the clouds and wows us as mad scientist Jordan Peele constructs his Spielberg-adjacent tale of terror and fame, but also a love letter to the cinema too. It's a little bit of a slower burn compared to his previous two features, which was in the hour and forty ballpark, whereas this one clock in about two hours and fifteen. As a result,…
91
"Talk to me, Goose."
Thirty-six years have passed since the events of Top Gun, and Maverick (Tom Cruise) is quickly being pushed out of the door as he has never been promoted, always staying in the cockpit in these three decades. The rise of drones has made pilots like him redundant, but Tom
"Iceman" Kazansky has something in mind for him. Giving Maverick one last shot at it, he lands a gig to become an instructor for Top Gun…
85
“What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?”
It’s the true true, the Wachowskis never hold back. If you’re going to tackle six sprawling stories in a film clocking at nearly three hours, you best hope you know what you’re doing, and it’s very fortunate that the Wachowskis are just among the best at what they do. Cloud Atlas opens with a campfire story told to kids, and it is there where the stories begin to ebb and flow…
86
“Hey, you want a toothpick?”
Never felt gravitated towards this all these years, but yeah, this did live up to the hype and then some. Surprisingly restrained while also hitting hard when it needs to, feels familiar yet refreshing all the same. Largely reliant on physicality, sparse dialogue, meaningful gestures to propel this picture. Nicolas Winding Refn knew what he was doing here, for sure! No wonder this was a big hit.
47
"Go."
As a deaf person, it's been nice to see an explosion of our presence throughout various media, whether it be articles or television, but sometimes it does come at a price. While I really enjoyed the deaf talent here as they are Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant and Troy Kotsur, I found their framing to be frequently eye-rolling, manipulative and it's all the more obvious that some of the drama was created to heighten tension or to gain sympathy.…
93
"Rick fucking Dalton."
Well, this is it. If Quentin Tarantino wanted to ride out into the sunset, he could do it now. Simultaneously going back to what catapulted him into fame with Pulp Fiction all the while this film is a throwback to classic Hollywood just as the Golden Era ended, it's both a love letter and a lamentation. Tarantino might as well have been building his entire career towards this, as he gets to delve deeply into what…
