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The Substance starts with a celebrity TV fitness host smiling at her audience. It ends with one of the grossest body horror sequences in recent history. And along the way, it provides stark social commentary on society’s fixation with women’s appearances.
Whenever anyone asks me what my favorite movie franchise is, my response, without fail, is Alien.
You might not immediately recognize the name Gena Rowlands, but I bet your favorite actor probably does. Rowlands, best known for her revolutionary work in her husband John Cassavetes’ films, passed away on August 14th at the age of 94. And while she may be best known to most people as playing older Rachel McAdams in The Notebook, there have been few actors as impactful as her in the past sixty years.
Historically, my family has bonded over Food Network. The Barefoot Contessa, Rachael Ray, Giada—my whole family would spend the weekends watching together and trying out recipes. Nowadays, we’ve shifted away from the big screen and towards the small, sending each other Instagram Reels from “Justine Snacks” or asking each other our thoughts on the latest Claire Saffitz croissant recipe.
Name: Isaac Pollock
To the surprise of pretty much no one who has ever met me, I was a deeply annoying child. I self–identified as an old soul. I was heavily involved in a slew of campaigns for local politicians. And I loved nothing more than to tell fans of a movie that the book was better.
Thanks to the promises in the marketing for Longlegs, the theater was full of nervous chitters anticipating what horrible abomination Nicolas Cage was going to appear as.
With MaXXXine, Ti West completes his trilogy, exploring the relentless pursuit of dreams and the intricate dance between self–determination and fate. Each film—X, Pearl, and MaXXXine—is marked by a distinct style and, despite individual flaws, each is a must watch as they delve into just how far one is willing to go to achieve their dreams.
“Kind of 2014”, admonishes Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) about a foam–type–situation that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) puts on a dish he’s R&D’ing. It’s flashy, it’s new, it’s stylish, and it’s full of so much air. The Bear, season three, is similar. I can’t look away, but the second I start digesting what I’m watching, I realize that there’s not a lot of substance. I’m paying however much money about seven hours of my time is worth to participate in a 10–course meal that is beautiful, and not at all untasty, but is far from fulfilling.
We’ve all considered Dropout, haven’t we? And I don’t mean the leave–it–all–for–a–digital–nomad lifestyle. (Though, yes, I can’t lie, that was a frequent thought in my freshman year before I realized that changing my major would suffice.) I mean the streaming service that offers a slate of innovative comedy shows for around five dollars a month.
In the heat–stricken summers of China during my middle school years, I would snuggle up alongside my grandmother while watching her favorite Chinese dramas. We’d sit on her balcony that overlooked the bustling city, guzzling cold Yakults down our throats while growing frustrated over the ad breaks that chimed in at the most inopportune times.
The claim that 2024 is a lackluster year for the Cannes Film Festival has been heard throughout the two weeks of the festival, even with body–horror freakout like The Substance or emphatically political thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the latter of which gained a nearly 15–minute emotional standing ovation after its premiere. Most main competition films, according to my fellow journalists, are dull and horribly nostalgic.
From May 31 through June 9, the 27th annual Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) shared a diverse lineup of stories from all around the world. The theme was immersion: immersion into different cultures, unpopular perspectives, and fictional worlds that echo our own. The lineup spits in the face of those who see cinema as mere escapism, and forces viewers to consider hard truths about faith, love, and resistance to oppression. Beyond the rich wealth of stories, the independent film festival introduced an advertising campaign bringing “real art” to life through a movie, further proving cinema as the art form for expression.
Studio Ghibli’s works are often lauded, first and foremost, for their technical artistry. The Japanese animation studio, which received an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, is known for its highly expressive, unique characters. They lead stories surrounded by color and movement. Each moment given to the appreciation of a mountainous landscape in Princess Mononoke or the fluidity of water in Ponyo steals away our breath, creating worlds seemingly beyond our perceptions of reality. Yet what makes Hayao Miyazaki’s films so striking is what firmly grounds them in the midst of all their fantasy. No movie demonstrates this so well as Spirited Away. More than 20 years after its release, the Oscar–winning film continues to shine, both as a cinematic masterpiece and as a movie whose meaning grows with you.
Most films come and go without much notice from the movie going public. Whether because of a bungled release strategy or a lack of thought or skill by the filmmakers, it's rare, especially these days, for a movie to get people talking. Alex Garland’s Civil War doesn’t have that problem. If anything, Civil War has too many people talking.
In Challengers, Luca Guadagnino, most known for Call Me By Your Name, transforms a simple challenger tennis match, a match close to the lowest level of tournament on a pro tour, into a high–stakes game dripping with adrenaline, sexual tension, and depravity.
In the vast landscape of modern entertainment, where reality TV and bite–sized content dominate our screens, there's a category of television that stands apart, captivating audiences with its depth, storytelling prowess, and cinematic grandeur. This realm is known as prestige television, a term that has become synonymous with high–quality, immersive storytelling that transcends the ordinary.
Francis Ford Coppola has never been one to play it safe. While some filmmakers are content to grind out a career as a dependable studio–hand, always delivering projects on time and under budget even if that means sacrificing a bit of artistic flair, Coppola has never been one of them. For better or worse, Coppola has rarely, if ever, compromised his inner artist’s vision, which explains how he’s gotten to a place where he was forced to self–finance his dream project titled Megalopolis. In advance of the film’s release sometime this year, I thought it would be a good time to look back at Coppola’s decades–spanning career and all of the highs and lows that have shaped it.
In my dimly lit dorm room, on Academy Awards night, anticipation crackled through the air like static on an old vinyl record. It was the glitziest, most extravagant spectacle in the realm of cinema. As I settled into my uncomfortable desk chair, surrounded by crumpled takeout bags and half–empty soda cans, I braced myself for the inevitable rollercoaster of emotions that accompanies Hollywood's grandest soirée.
I have watched all two seasons of Pen15, but I don’t even know what platform it is on. My TikTok for–you page is filled with clips of any semi–popular TV show in the last 15 years, divided into short parts, split screened with Subway Surfers or slime DIYs. These videos even prompted me to watch all seven seasons of Malcolm in the Middle, a show I had never even heard of before this year.
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