Flash Frames

David Byrne in True Stories David Byrne is a weirdo. If you know anything about him, you could probably put that together. Having any sort of similarity getting demolished is Byrne’s own cohesion, so if you want any sort of cohesion, True Stories isn’t the movie for you. Whenever I ask someone about this movie, they can’t really explain it. What I find interesting about that is that the title card says it all: True Stories: A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas . That’s really all to it. As well as directing the film, Byrne plays The Narrator, who visits the fictional town of Virgil, Texas during its 150th anniversary celebrations. He converses with the townspeople, where all of them have their own things happening. A bachelor trying to find a woman to settle down with, a married couple who never talk to each other, a woman who lies about literally everything, and a conspiracy theorist preacher are just some of the citizens that we focus on throughout the film. There’s barel...

J.K. Simmons and Dwayne Johnson in Red One Cutting right to the chase on this one, especially since it’s after Christmas: Red One is garish. I can’t even say it’s the worst thing in the world, mainly because it’s at least got some ambition to it. Santa Claus is reimagined as a bodybuilding, cookie-eating machine and is played by J.K. Simmons. There’s also little hints to other mythological beings that are probably being set up to show up in a hypothetical sequel, but who knows if that’s going to happen. St. Nick is protected by MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), which is basically the S.H.I.E.L.D. equivalent to this world, alongside his personal security team led by The Rock (I can’t remember his character’s name, but I’m not bothered to look it up, so like his contracts for every movie, The Rock wins). Santa’s kidnapped, so The Rock has to team up with hacker Chris Evans (also can’t remember his name) to save Christmas from being annihilated by a Christmas witch...

Lily Rose-Depp in Nosferatu Mentioning how excited I ended up being for Nosferatu in my review of Tarot might have put a curse onto me. Robert Eggers’s career has felt like it’s built up to this. The writer and director of The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman have all been massive hits with me. The Lighthouse is arguably one of my favorite horror movies ever, and The Northman proved that he could tell stories on a massive scale, on top of delivering on some damn good Viking action bits. Even The Witch , a movie that’s grown off of me over the years, deserves credit for launching the career of Anya Taylor-Joy, who’s slowly becoming one of my favorite actors. A Eggers-helmed remake of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror , F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece, has been in the works since before The Witch was even released. To me, it feels like a match made in heaven. Eggers’ washed out, bleak look to his movies feels like perfect material for a vampire flick. As much as I was hyped...

Avantika in Tarot We’re at the point in the year that I like to call “The Catch-Up,” at least for movies. Not everyone can watch every new release in a year, myself included. So, looking around streaming services and even looking at places like the local library are usually on schedule. For the end of December and most of January, The Catch-Up is in effect, and Tarot , which can be boiled down to a sauceless Final Destination , is the first of them. This is nearly every classic horror trope in one movie: a group of friends spend some time in the woods and do tarot readings together, and they break the rules of the readings, releasing curses that will kill each person based on the reading they received. The idea of cursed tarot cards certainly has potential, but to put it bluntly, the movie is just so bland. Believe it or not, there are some positives here. The monster designs are surprisingly inventive, and both Jacob Batalon and Avantika try their best to save a lifeless script. Both ...

Olivia Hussey in Black Christmas Figured that since today is Christmas Day, I might as well talk about a Christmas movie I recently watched for the first time. Not only that, it’s a double whammy of a Christmas movie and a horror movie. If you’re a big enough fan of both holidays, you could get two mandatory viewings out of it. Black Christmas , which follows a group of sorority sisters trying to survive a deranged serial killer during the holidays, has been on my watchlist for a while now. The thing I had always heard was that this was widely considered to be the first slasher movie, especially when John Carpenter cited this movie as the inspiration for his now-classic Halloween . It may be up to you if Black Christmas is a better movie than Halloween , but Black Christmas is much more terrifying. Everything about this is pitch perfect, especially the editing. The editing being this much of a highlight is important, especially when it comes to a scene having to do with cutting into ...

Still from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 It’s been fascinating to see these movies become underdog stories. It’s been over five years now since that truly awful trailer of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie released, with that nightmarish original design for Sonic embedded itself into our minds. Now, two movies and a spin-off streaming series later, it’s hard to believe that one design change brought the franchise up to this. Sonic the Hedgehog and its 2022 sequel are pure family fun. Some groan-worthy bits thrown in occasionally, but that’s to be expected. They’re largely movies for kids and families, that’s gonna come with it, but with this new installment, a good amount of that “family movie” façade is mostly (intentionally) stripped back. In the third installment, Team Sonic has a new enemy to face: a mysterious experiment called Shadow, who’s broken out of military unit G.U.N's containment to enact his revenge on G.U.N. from a tragedy 50 years earlier. Obviously I’m leaving out major...

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in  Queer Luca Guadagnino has slowly become one of my favorite directors working right now. Ever since 2017’s gorgeous  Call Me by Your Name  (which helped rocket Timothée Chalamet into stardom), Guadagnino has just been, as most filmmakers do, making films. His loose remake of Dario Argento’s cult giallo flick  Suspiria  and  Bones and All , his reunion with Chalamet, were fascinating dips into horror. Earlier this year, though, was when  Challengers  exploded, which is one of the best movies of the year. He’s not stopping there, though.  After the Hunt  with Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts, an Austin Butler-led  American Psycho  adaptation, and  Sgt. Rock , a potential dip into the world of comic book movies with Daniel Craig, are all on the horizon. Right in the middle of all that is  Queer , an adaptation of the William S. Burrough’s novella, and it’s Guadagnino’s most surreal film ...

Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoë Saldaña in Emilia Pérez Movies with ambition are always something to appreciate. It’s a very vague sentence, but I can’t be the only one with that sentiment. A project like Emilia Pérez , at least on paper, is also something we don’t come across too often. The film is based on writer/director Jacques Audiard’s opera of the same name, which in turn is based on a novel by Boris Razon titled Écoute . The movie spread like wildfire with its premiere at Cannes last May, where its main actresses took him the Jury Prize for Best Actress, those performers being Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. That goes without saying what the actual movie is: a crime/thriller/comedy/musical about a feared Mexican cartel leader that hires a lawyer to help him disappear while attaining his dream of transitioning into a woman. The highlights here easily have to be Saldaña and Gascón, making the movie not only watchable but enjoyable whenever they’re on s...

Ralph Fiennes in Conclave This has been on my radar for a few months now. I’ve enjoyed director Edward Berger’s previous effort, his German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front , which was a surprise Oscar contender and won in nearly every technical category, as well as being nominated for Best Picture. That being said, whatever he did next would have some big names attached to it. Conclave has that in spades. After the death of the Pope, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence has to oversee the election process while reconvening with all of the different contenders at play, all of them wanting to become the new Pope. The process of this election is very in-depth, and for someone who didn’t too much about the subject going into it, it feels like there was a lot of care and effort put into the different strategies that are in place to make the process move smoothly. Berger’s direction is the standout here, his smooth style lending well to a poli...

Vera Drew in The People’s Joker Boy, did this have a rocky road. I remember reading articles about The People’s Joker , actress/director/co-writer/editor Vera Drew’s low-budget, punk rock, mixed media comic book parody of various DC properties, and how it was hit with a cease-and-desist at the Toronto Film Festival back in 2022 by Warner Bros. itself. It wasn’t until April of this year when it finally received a small theatrical release, and I’m kicking myself for not making the time to see it in a theater. At first, I thought I hadn’t seen anything that Drew has worked on, but after looking over her credits, I saw that she edited An Evening with Tim Heidecker , an hour of comfortably unfunny stand-up that’s practically anti-comedy. The People’s Joker lays claim to the term “anti-comedy,” and this Joker runs wild with it. For its characters alone, it’s a surreal remix of what Batman fans and DC fans in general know that feel almost nonsensical. Ra's al Ghul isn’t the head of the L...

Mikey Madison in Anora AUTHOR’S NOTE : This review is copied right from my Letterboxd, tweaked slightly to fit for the profile. If you want to follow me there, you can click this link . Getting this right out of the way, I did like Anora . You can see the grade below. If anything, it's a showcase of Mikey Madison and a bunch of fantastic Russian actors I've never heard of before. As you've probably seen before, Madison is probably gonna get a bunch of awards for this that are rightfully deserved, but I also think Yura Borisov should get just as much praise as one of the two bodyguards with the Russian family. He's just as fantastic as Madison. I haven't seen too much of writer/director Sean Baker's work. I've only seen the great The Florida Project , and both Tangerine and Red Rocket have shot up my list because of Anora , and I just loved the look of this movie. I'm not sure how much of the lighting is natural, but a lot of the movie certainly looked ...

Angelina Jolie in Maria Pablo Larraín is the Chilean director mostly known these days Jackie and Spencer , two of three in a loose trilogy of films that focus on iconic 20th century women. The first, which has a mesmerizing lead performance from Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, really snuck up on me the first time I saw it. That let Spencer , where Kristen Stewart gives a knockout performance of the late Princess Diana, blow me away as one of my favorite films of the 2020s so far. There’s also Larraín’s last film, the Pinochet-skewering satire El Conde , which is also a stunning slow-burn. That being said, my interest was through the roof for whatever Larraín’s hands were on next. Maria , the third film in this loose trilogy not only doesn’t have the magic of Larraín’s past work, but has seemingly lost what made the other entries so interesting. Angelina Jolie plays influential opera singer Maria Callas in her final days, ones where she still can’t escape the spotlight that she’s be...

I figured I should get back writing more freely, so I’m just going to talk about the Golden Globe nominations, which were announced earlier this morning (Monday). I’m mainly going to talk about the film categories, but it’s worth mentioning that I watched The Penguin and the nomination for Best Limited Series, along with the performances from Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, and Deirdre O’Connell, are all worthy choices. There’s a good chance they don’t win, but I appreciate the nominations a lot. Go watch that, if you haven’t yet. Right out of the gate, the most nominated movie of this year is Emilia Pérez , Jacques Audiard’s ambitious crime-thriller-musical, with 10 nominations across the board. Personally, I’m only about a half-hour into it, and I’m just not a fan. I’m gonna finish it before awards season fully kicks into gear, but I think my thoughts won’t change too much on it. Now, I’m just gonna go through the film categories one by one to talk about how I feel about it. Best Mo...

Snowpiercer , the Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho’s English language debut, celebrated its 10th anniversary this past summer, as well as releasing in 4K for the first time next month, so it felt right to revisit. Adapting the first volume of French graphic novel Le Transperceneige , Snowpiercer takes place in a future where an experiment to slow down global warming backfires and kills off most life on the planet. All of humanity is now kept in an ever-moving train, hoping to survive, or at least live. Things go sideways for the heads of the train when the most recent uprising attempt, led by Curtis (Chris Evans), the de-facto leader of the tail-section passengers, ends up being their most successful endeavor yet. Speaking of, Evans stands tall over nearly every performance, even the supporting roles from Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, and an underrated Ewan Bremner. Only Joon-ho regular Song Kang-ho comes close to his level. Evans oozes movie-star charisma here, and if now-disg...