“We only have one life and you are too afraid to live it.” Directed by Dexter Fletcher (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman) and written by Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and Tom Holland-era Spider-Man writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Ghosted is more action-packed than romantic-comedy, but it takes its shot at both anyway. Needy farmer Cole Turner (Chris Evans) and…
Reviews
Review: ‘Umma’ Has Compelling Ideas but Falls Short Due to a Restrained and Disjointed Script
Korean immigrant Amanda (Sandra Oh) and her homeschooled daughter Chrissy (Atypical’s Fivel Stewart) live a quiet life on a rural farm beekeeping and selling honey. They live without modern technology as Amanda claims to be “allergic” to electricity, and therefore rely on local shop owner and friend Danny (Dermot Mulroney) to sell their honey. Amanda is…
Review: ‘Night’s End’ is Saved by An Entertaining Final Act
Night’s End, the latest from Jennifer Reeder (Knives and Skin), written by American playwright Brett Neveu, follows Ken Barber (Geno Walker), a divorced dad suffering from anxiety and agoraphobia, who finds himself in a haunted apartment. The first act builds a picture of Ken’s life, including his daily routine: he wakes up counting backwards from 10…
Review: ‘The Requin’ Loses Human Story of Survival Message to Laughably Bad CG Sharks
I’m not a fan of Shark films. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them — they’re just not for me. I find them quite boring and predictable, the sort of qualities I much prefer to be in my beloved slasher flicks. I watched The Requin (which means “shark” in French) purely because of Alicia Silverstone, but she delivered what…
Review: ‘The Fallout’ is an Intimate Character Study of Life After Trauma
The opening of Megan Park’s feature-length directorial debut, The Fallout, which follows the aftermath of a school shooting, felt reminiscent of 2018’s Vox Lux, in that abrupt gunfire suddenly destroys what began as a normal day. Unlike Vox Lux, however, we don’t see anything, we just hear it. It’s an inciting incident that won’t sit well with everyone,…
Review: Happiest Season
Christmas is a time for love, family, warmth… and this Letterboxd list of Christmas films featuring heterosexual couples wearing red and green. While the list plays for laughs, it highlights how manufactured straight Christmas films are and how inundated audiences have become with them. LGBT stories that take place over the holidays are few and far between,…
LFF Review: Wildfire
In memory of Nika McGuigan. Set on the fractious Irish border, Cathy Brady establishes the tone of her feature-length debut, Wildfire, by opening with archival footage of the conflict and terrorism linked to The Troubles, and more recently, the divide caused by Brexit. The social and political unrest simmers in the background of the film’s main story,…
LFF Review: A Love Story
In Jennifer Sheridan’s original debut feature, Rose: A Love Story, husband Sam (screenwriter Matt Stokoe) and wife Rose (Sophie Rundle) live a secluded life together in England’s snowy woods. Sam spends his days in the freezing cold gathering wood, setting rabbit traps, and looking after them both, whereas Rose stays inside writing novels, on a typewriter…
Review: The Haunting of Bly Manor
Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, was an absolute masterclass in emotive storytelling, story adaptation, and filmmaking. This time, Flanagan continues to reinvent great stories of the past as the second installment of The Haunting explores Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw”. The Haunting of Bly…
Review: Ratched
We were first introduced to the terrifying and tyrannical Nurse Mildred Ratched in Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — but her character was brought to life by Louise Fletcher in Miloš Forman’s film adaptation, which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1976. Nurse Ratched manipulated her patients in…