Sara Clements

For this week's main review, I am joined by Nicole Ackman, Dan Bayer, Sara Clements & Danilo Castro. Together, we are discussing the latest film from Netflix, Ben Wheatley's 2020 version of "Rebecca" starring Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kirstin Scott Thomas. The film is being heavily compared to the Best Picture winning 1940 film by Alfred Hitchcock since the two are based on the same novel by Daphne du Maurier, so how does the updated adaptation hold up? Listen in a s we discuss the costume...

David Freyne’s Dating Amber takes gays back to high school. A charming comedy of a relatable experience where sex is on everyone’s mind and where they feel pressured to have it. An environment of puberty and horniness, and where sexuality is always under suspicion. If you’re a guy and too girly, you’re gay. If you’re a girl and too manly, you’re gay. It’s a time of confusion mixed with internalized homophobia. Where the fear of rumors is met with denials. It’s an environment full of pressures...

When Roald Dahl saw the film adaptation of his novel, The Witches, in 1990, he called it “utterly appalling.” With a roster of world-class artists like director Robert Zemeckis taking a crack at adapting the classic work to film alongside Guillermo del Toro and Black-ish writer Kenya Barris, also with Alfonso Cuarón producing, the question remains, what would Dahl think of it this time around? As a man hostile towards adaptations of his works, the answer would probably be the same. There are ...

“I’m mad, don’t forget it.”

Rossano Brazzi’s Psychout for Murder feels like an off choice to be writing about for Gialloween. While the marketing of this classic ’60s Italian thriller wants you to expect a piece of giallo, it feels incredibly different and unique in many ways. It can’t be characterized as a murder mystery of gruesome horrors. It’s not suspenseful or shocking even. There is murder, but the way these crimes are executed is much more satisfying and clever than a knife in hand could create. There are no slit throats, no gushes of blood, no one hung bloodied from a ceiling...

Welcome to Love and Monsters, or should I say, Joel’s Declassified Monster Apocalypse Survival Guide. The second feature film by Michael Matthews is set in a world seven years after an apocalyptic event wiped out 95% of the Earth’s human population and caused the mutation of insects and amphibians into enormous killing machines. The president has been killed by a giant moth (oh, we wish!) and those who have survived hid underground. That’s where we find our protagonist and narrator, Joel (Dyl...

The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini allegedly once said that he dreamed the devil had appeared to him sitting on the end of his bed. The devil began to play Tartini's violin, creating a performance so magnificent it took the composer's breath away. He made it his goal to recreate what he had heard in his dream, creating what is now famously known as the Devil's Trill Sonata. But to Tartini, this piece was inferior to what he had heard, his ambition to recreate it failing so terribly he th...

Martin Provost's How to Be a Good Wife is a film that embodies "Vive la révolution!" It's not an unfamiliar premise in its critiques gender norms, a subject that's been tackled on film many times before. What makes the film different, however, is where it takes place. As it begins, text appears on the screen to remind us – not that we need it – that young girls were destined to be wives and perfect mothers. They were sent to schools specializing in making proper women out of them — which is to say, as homemakers. The film is set in one of those century-old housekeeping schools that contribu...

Before sitting down to watch Eternal Beauty, it felt like I hadn't seen Sally Hawkins since her Oscar-nominated turn in The Shape of Water. Her two films before this one — Paddington 2 and Godzilla: King of the Monsters — are both films I've seen. It's not that they're not memorable (Paddington 2 is the best film of the decade) but rather, they're films that don't allow her to use her range fully. One tends to forget how good she is and how...

It seems like every year around awards season, film fans ask the same question: “When will the Academy recognize stunt performers?” Sure, they have their own trophy (Taurus World Stunt Awards), a stunt ensemble category at the SAG Awards, and a stunt coordination category at the Creative Arts Emmys, but what about Oscar? Stunt coordinator Jack Gill has been fighting for 29 years to get a stunt category, which Bilge Ebiri says is surprising considering “during that time (1) the film industry has become completely dominated by action movies, which are heavily reliant on stunts, and (2) the Os...

For this week's main review, I am joined by Sara Clements, Ryan C. Showers, Josh Parham & Danilo Castro. Together, we are discussing the latest film from Netflix, Antonio Campos' "The Devil All The Time" starring a huge cast that includes Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska & Robert Pattinson. What did we think of the film, its themes, characters and more? Tune in to find out.
Thank you so much for listening. Yo...

“There’s a lot of no good sons of bitches out there,” and The Devil All the Time has many. Based on the novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock – who provides insightful and contemplative narration – the film begins with a map filling the screen that links postwar backwoods towns in Ohio and West Virginia. Despite the 10-hour drive between them, they’re closely linked. The characters who live there are connected, their lives intercepting either directly or indirectly throughout the film....

Sean Durkin’s sophomore feature, as both writer and director, opens with the shot of a home almost fully concealed by shrubbery, but you can see the two cars in the driveway. It cuts to Rory (Jude Law) speaking excitedly on the phone. The camera then pans away from him – outside, a window working as a barrier to what is being discussed. The audience is always made up of outsiders looking in, but this fact is accentuated. “The Nest,” at first, presents a beautiful, fully-realized image of a family: a father who bonds with his children; a mother who loves them unconditionally; a daughter who...

"Look at you," begins a narration by Rosamund Pike at the opening of I Care a Lot. She tells us we're not good people because there's no such thing. "Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor," and being poor doesn't agree with her.

Tapping into Amy Dunne in a role that's her best since Gone Girl, Pike plays Marla Grayson. She's a well-respected, court-appointed guardian to the elderly. She works with Fran (Eiza González), her partner in life and in crime, and they collude with a doctor (Alicia Witt) on cases to game the system: picking out the best from th...

Ammonite is a type of coiled fossil, small in the centre and spiralling outward. These remains of extinct marine life symbolize the beginning of something; in the case of Francis Lee's film, it represents the romance between its leads. The film brings to screen the story of Mary Anning, an English paleontologist who became known for her findings of Jurassic marine fossils. Mary's work is important, but the film's heart lies in the relationship she develops with another woman. Excavation takes time and care to find something beautiful within, and that's reflected in Ammonite's delicate love...

A mercenary walks into the den of a woman and her masked crew. They’re hoping to exchange French luxuries for diamonds, but the mercenary scams them. A classic fight with the sparks of gunpowder ensues, delivering the masculine toughness that encompasses most of the western genre. But the scene quickly shifts to a grand house where women outnumber men five to one. These characters are living and witnessing the savage state of a country that has resulted in a devastating civil war. Unlike most...