Who better to make a film about a middle-aged, mediocre white Jewish man than a young, talented black woman? This very obscure concept is the central driving force behind Lemon, the first feature-length film from wunderkind filmmaker and auteur Janicza Bravo, which she wrote with her husband Brett Gelman, who also plays the lead role…
Category: comedy
David Brent: Life on the Road (2016)
Who doesn’t love Ricky Gervais? Apparently, quite a few people because he’s one of the most divisive comedians working today. However, for everyone who fails to see what an absolute genius Gervais is, I compensate for their lack of faith in his extraordinary skills as a performance by being an unabashed, adoring fan. Like many…
The Big Sick (2017)
Independent cinema has gone a long way since its early days of obscurity, and it continues to be surprising and manages to grow exponentially constantly. One of this year’s best independent films is The Big Sick, a film that may not be overly original or completely audacious in execution, but for what it lacks in…
Manhattan (1979)
Woody Allen has made some of the greatest comedy films of all time, regardless of his few failures. One of his most towering achievements in Manhattan, a film that I have loved for a very long time, but only after watching it upon my return to the titular city did my opinion of this magnificent…
Lost in Paris (2017)
Sometimes the best movies are the ones you weren’t expecting, or perhaps hadn’t even heard of. One of the best films of the year is undoubtedly Lost in Paris (French: Paris pieds nus), a whimsical and brilliantly constructed comedy that wants nothing more than for the audience to have fun, and while many films may…
Love and Death (1975)
It may be easy to deride him for his overly prolific career that results in his fair share of dismal failures, but I do think Woody Allen is one of the most extraordinary filmmakers of all time. To remind of his true genius, I’ve decided to do a retrospective on the decade I believe represents…
House (1977)
I was discussing House with a friend, and we came to an agreement – we aren’t entirely sure if this is a good film or a bad film but it is a film. In fact, to call it a film itself is troubling because it is more of a “thing” above all else. No one…
Raising Arizona (1987)
Joel and Ethan Coen are filmmakers that have their names synonymous with quality, even if a few of their films were clunkers (namely Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, two films I am still quite fond of). They have god-like status nowadays, but it wasn’t always that way. Therefore, it stands to reason that their early…
8 Women (2002)
We live in a world where 8 Women (French: 8 femmes) exists. If that isn’t a comforting thought, then I am not quite sure what is. The fact that I waited my entire life to watch this film is unbelievable and utterly wrong, and I regret not watching this film sooner. It is a film…
Hot Fuzz (2007)
I am arguably on an Edgar Wright bender at the moment – in anticipation for Baby Driver, I have been revisiting some of Wright’s other films, almost all of them for the first time since their initial release. Wright may be a popular director, but he is by no means a populist filmmaker – he…
The Postmodern Pelican 