Flash Frames

"She started banging on her door pounding on it, “let me in,” and then... bang!" Director: Geeta Gandbhir Synopsis: “Police bodycam footage reveals how a long-running neighborhood dispute turned fatal in this documentary about fear, prejudice and Stand Your Ground laws.” __________________________________________________ I’m self-aware enough to admit my failings as a newer critic, and one of those is that I rarely watch documentaries. It’s not that I don’t like them, but for the most part, I just don’t gravitate towards them. However, The Perfect Neighbor immediately stood out to me back in January when it premiered at Sundance. I didn’t personally know what it was about yet, but all I knew was that this doc was almost entirely made up of footage from police bodycams. There’s seemingly no interviews and no commentary of any sort either; you’re seeing simply what happened, intentionally designed that way to form your own thoughts on this incident. It’s a lot to ask from the ...

“Some search for battle, others are born into it…” Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti Synopsis: “Bob is a washed-up revolutionary who lives in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his evil nemesis resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their pasts.” __________________________________________________ Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson has already cemented himself as one of the go-to directors of this era, and even if you don’t know that name, you’ve at least heard of the movies he’s made. There Will Be Blood , Punch-Drunk Love , Boogie Nights , The Master , Magnolia , Phantom Thread … He’s rarely missed, at least for me. It’s been tough to wrap my head around his latest film, One Battle After Another , and I’ve seen it twice. I gotta...

“All $$ ain’t good $$” Director: Spike Lee Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Princess Nokia, and Ice Spice Synopsis: “When a powerful music mogul is targeted by a ransom plot, he is forced to fight for his family and legacy while jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.” __________________________________________________ Spike Lee is undoubtedly one of the biggest living legends in cinema. I don’t think anything is ever gonna take away the impact he’s left. Admittedly, his filmography is a terribly embarrassing blind spot for me, but I’ve seen most of the heavy hitters, barring Malcolm X . Wild that I haven’t gotten to that yet. That’s besides the point, though. The next point is… another movie I haven’t seen, and that’s High and Low , one of the many celebrated movies from the just-as-celebrated Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I’m not gonna make this a history lesson or anything, but to keep things...

“The law’s reach never stretched this far.” Director: Akiva Schaffer Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, CCH Pounder, and Danny Huston Synopsis: “Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr becomes a police officer like his legendary father and must save the police department from shutting down by solving a case.” __________________________________________________ It’s nice to laugh every once in a while. It’s even better to laugh incredibly often, and that doesn’t really happen these days. By all accounts, that’s mainly because big budget studio comedies don’t really happen anymore. Sure, we’ve got the smaller ones or the ones made for streaming, but that’s not cutting it anymore. The spoof comedies, or the ones with really dumb jokes that got run into the ground in the mid-2000s, used to fill in that gap. Airplane , the original Naked Gun movies, Scary Movie (which is making its own comeback next year), and Mel Brooks comedies like Blazing Saddles and Young Franke...

Caught Stealing (2025) Director: Darren Aronofsky Cast: Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Benito Martínez Ocasio, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane. Synopsis: Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City, forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined.

I'm deciding to try out video reviews again, so please let me know if you like this format! Ballerina  (2025) Director: Len Wiseman Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, and Keanu Reeves Synopsis:  An assassin trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma organization sets out to seek revenge after her father's death.

Still from Baby Invasion There aren’t too many movies where I think of what I think “movies” can and cannot be. I like to keep my mind open for a lot of things, even if I haven’t seen some of the widely agreed-upon classics yet. A massive standout in experimental film I’ve seen recently was AGGRO DR1FT , the first venture for acclaimed erratic filmmaker Harmony Korine into his multimedia company, EDGLRD. I thought AGGRO DR1FT was surreal to watch in a theater, and true to his statements on that movie and this one, it really didn’t feel like a movie. I have good memories of watching AGGRO DR1FT in a theater, even though it’d probably be a one-time event. Korine isn’t stopping with this, though. Outside of AGGRO DR1FT and his latest “film,” the one we’re about to talk about, his next film is already set: The Trap , his first animated movie which was originally going to star Idris Elba, Robert Pattinson, and Benicio del Toro before it imploded right when it was going into production. T...

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe in Kraven the Hunter I’m not even sure what to say. Sony’s little venture into Spider-Man spin-off movies that don’t actually have Spider-Man in them was admittedly interesting to watch unfold, in a morbid sort of way. I remember being pretty excited for the first couple of Venom movies, which I think are fun in their own right. Turning Venom and Eddie’s relationship into a rom-com is an inspired call, but I can’t even begin to say that about the other films in this “franchise.” Morbius and Madame Web were both famously clowned on by the internet, but even though the latest Venom movie really wasn’t, I think that was the worst of all of these spin-offs so far. Now, we have the unfortunate end to this little world. Sony said just a few days before Kraven the Hunter released that the solo Spider-Man villain movies aren’t returning any time soon, so we’re getting to see a cinematic universe implode in the span of two hours. For the sake of savin...

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...

Vampires have been tough to crack recently for me. I’ve given a go at some of the more popular vampire movies out there, but they just haven’t been my thing. The Twilight movies are in the so-bad-it’s-good camp for me, and I probably should’ve watched Interview With the Vampire before I watched the awful Queen of the Damned , as much as I love Aaliyah. I’ve realized that I’m more into horror-leaning vampire movies as opposed to romance or dramas. I like Nosferatu quite a bit, and I’m especially excited for Robert Eggers’s version coming out this Christmas. I was even into both Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter from last year, the vampire movies that came out last year that no one really saw. So, there are only a few vampire movies I genuinely like, and with Abigail , maybe that trend will continue. In New York City, a little girl named Abigail is abducted by a group of professional kidnappers. Abigail happens to be the daughter of a powerful figure in the crime underworld...

I’m going to be honest, this is one of my most anticipated movies of the year. AGGRO DR1FT has fascinated me since it was announced last summer. Its director, Harmony Korine, who’s made movies like Gummo and Spring Breakers , has also actively shown his distaste for movies right now. He’s even dubbed AGGRO DR1FT as “gamecore,” being much more inspired by Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto cutscenes than other movies. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival last September, it’s mainly gone on to be screened in strip clubs and be the background for Boiler Room sets by Yung Lean. So, whether or not I’d think it’s good or bad, AGGRO DR1FT was basically being set up as something new for the film industry, even if it’s a deep dive into experimental film and, at certain points, video art. Against all odds, though, AGGRO DR1FT does end up occupying a very strange space in my head. It’s worth mentioning what the plot is, even if it isn’t the focal point of the movie. Jordi Mollà play...