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Following its initial release on November 16, the Netflix holiday original The Princess Switch has garnered fairly consistent reviews: it's silly, heart–warming, holiday fun that is extremely predictable. While I have nothing against a predictable story line and actually prefer happy endings, this movie felt like 100 minutes of very little excitement.
The coming–of–age of a LGBT teenager in a religious household is not a premise that is unfamiliar to audiences of contemporary film and television. As the seed of interpersonal and ideological conflict, the religious experiences of those in the LGBT community spur meaningful discussions around identity, family, self–acceptance, and, of course, love. The exploration of how religion shapes the experiences of young people within the LGBT community, and the potential trauma that might entail, can be enormously valuable for all viewers no matter what their background or identity. In recent years, the traditional canon of coming–of–age stories has expanded enormously as LGBT representation in film continues to grow, with many new classics emerging, garnering critical acclaim and stacking up awards. Based on a true story, Boy Erased provides a crucial look at a dimension of the contemporary LGBT experience that many of us forget has affected hundreds of thousands of Americans—the continued practice of conversion therapy, which proves particularly detrimental to LGBT youth.
The highly anticipated film, Bohemian Rhapsody, was released in theatres on November 2nd. With Robot star Rami Malek playing Freddie Mercury, the movie celebrates Queen and explores the extraordinary life of its leader. In this day and age, many of us have only experienced the iconic music of Queen, but don’t know all the details of Mercury’s revolutionary existence. Here’s a quick crash course to prepare you for the movie:
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a mouthful of a movie title, and it’s representative of the film’s biggest problem: it tries to do to way too much. Although Crimes is ultimately an enjoyable watch, it fails to capture the elusive magic of the original series and muddies the waters for the Potterverse going forward.
The new Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald movie is coming up, and if you're anything like the Harry Potter fanatic I am, you hate it when you can’t figure out all of the references and details. A marathon is all you need to catch up and remember everything for the (much worse) new movie.
I have watched in horror and disbelief with the rest of the country as reports of mass shootings and instances of gun violence have consistently plagued news outlets and dinner–table conversations for almost as long as I could remember. But it wasn’t until about a week ago that I started to think about the issue of gun violence a little more personally.
The opening moments of Can You Ever Forgive Me? reveal a New York City unlike the blue–skied wonderland where writers keen on making it take to the illuminated streets in search of their big break. Instead, we experience the well–worn streets of the Upper West Side through the eyes of the real–life writer Lee Israel, the central figure of the film, who is portrayed with control and sympathy by Melissa McCarthy. After being fired from her job and told off by her agent, Lee is at a loss on seemingly every measurable scale of her life. She’s behind in her rent, her cat is ill, and despite her talent and previous success, she sees no future of her own voice making it to the page, hiding behind the figures she writes about). The gloom and doom she carries with her seems to infiltrate every space she enters, including the bar she frequents given her habit of heavy drinking. Just by chance, Lee happens upon a spirited, charismatic man, Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), who she’d met before, or at least remembered given an alcohol–induced, fur–destroying public urination stunt at a party. Despite their dichotomous personalities, the two bond quickly. However, as delightful as their friendship may be, it is far from the only unlikely spark that sets the film into motion.
Overlord is everything you’d expect in a WWII–zombie–flamethrower–mad–doctor–thriller–horror film. It follows Boyce, an American soldier, and three other members of his paratrooper squad: Corporal Ford, Tibbet, and Chase. Their mission is to destroy a German radio tower located in an old church in a French city. As the soldiers attempt to carry out their order, they rope in a French girl, Chloe, to help them, and witness Nazi atrocities, human experiments, and an awful lot of (subjectively digestible) body horror.
I remember the anxious moments of rewinding a VCR tape, pounding my pudgy kid finger on the button and willing it to go faster. We had a whole collection of Disney films on VCR, and even after the major switch to DVDs swept the nation, we kept our tapes out of a sense of what I can only call nostalgia. In 2017, when the live–action Beauty and the Beast hit marquees, I was no exception to the flock of teenage girls paying to rewatch an old classic. I hunkered down in the movie theatre seat with my pulse in the tips of my fingers as I reached for the popcorn in my sister’s lap, all too ready to feel a new sense of enlightenment or excitement from an old story. Let’s just say that I was profoundly disappointed.
Last week at the Philadelphia Film Festival, I sat through a four–hour movie. At the Ritz Five movie theater starting at dusk, I plopped down in my seat, constantly shifting around and losing focus. After dozing off within the first hour of the movie, there was a point when I wanted to exit the theater. I thought I knew exactly where the movie was going, and in my mind, I had thought up the perfect movie review headline: “An Elephant Sitting Still is Proof that Movies Should Be No Longer than Two and a Half Hours.” By midnight, my view couldn’t have changed more dramatically.
Aesthetics reign supreme in Suspiria: powerful, contortionist choreography plays to a soundtrack of low–key piano melodies and the music of the dancer’s sighs, while malicious lighting illuminates the face of the cast in red. A remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film of the same name, Suspiria is director Luca Guadagnino's own spin on the cult classic—with mixed success.
The Gershman Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival, one of the oldest film festivals in Philadelphia, kicked off on November 3—and you don’t want to miss out. A total of 39 films from 12 different countries will be shown, running until November 18.
There seem to be no shortage of shows for foodies on Netflix—from Chef’s Table to Ugly Delicious, shows that merge cooking and culture are a huge part of the vast array of docuseries available on the streaming platform. The most recent addition to this wealth of colorful culinary adventures is a four part series called Salt Fat Acid Heat, based on the award–winning cookbook of the same name. Samin Nosrat, the author of the cookbook, serves the pivotal role as the show’s animated hostess, who exudes a kind of humility that convinces viewers that they have the power to master the elements of good cooking. As gorgeous and cinematic as Salt Fat Acid Heat may be, there is something uniquely personal about its approach. While watching, I felt like I was part of the adventure, as though I was in the kitchen or the market with Nostrat, who was taking me on a journey to the very essence of flavor.
Riverdale, in its creation, is something of an anomaly. Show creator Roberto Aguirre–Sacasa looked at the unassuming world of the Archie Comics and decided to make a murder–mystery TV show for modern adolescents complete with sex, death, and drama. Its first season fared reasonably well, and for good reason: it had a coherent plot and a somewhat–contained story, looking at the murder of a local student. On Rotten Tomatoes, it received an 88% Fresh rating, which is a solid grade. It had its charm in a supposedly self–aware look at high schools, which seemed to be comically overdone with its mean–girl tropes and its jock with a heart of gold.
Being an international human rights, bestselling author, and Golden Globe Nominee were more than enough to earn Loung Ung a keynote speaking event at Perry World House last Friday. But unlike most of the speakers brought to Penn, she was once a refugee and child soldier. It’s no wonder Penn FilmAid had been arranging to plan an event with her since February.
Paramount’s Heathers has had a long journey before coming onto the small screen. The project, a modern adaptation of the famous 1989 film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, was slated to go up months ago but was scrapped in June following controversy around its poor handling of school shootings. It is described as a “black comedy” that is a sexier, modern reboot of the original film. Watching Heathers makes it obvious as to why the project was put on the backmost burner.
I've been anticipating the release of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for months. As a a self–proclaimed teen drama fiend, a dark remake of Sabrina the Teenage Witch sounded extremely appealing. Whenever a trailer came out for the show, I clicked right away, and each tease made me for excited for the full season. And on Oct. 26, when the first season of the show came out, I was not disappointed.
Remember when Hannah Baker told Zach that 2001: A Space Odyssey was “boring…You should definitely see it so that when pretentious people talk about it you can yawn really loudly,” in season 2 of 13 Reasons Why? Yeah, me neither. I’ve never even seen the show. I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey though, once, this past weekend in the Franklin Institute’s massive dome theater.
When handling difficult, disturbing subject matter, a truly affecting film finds a way of addressing the seriousness of its content without spoon–feeding it to the audience. Beautiful Boy is a portrait of addiction, but also an exploration of just how far a family can bend before it breaks. It's about dark matters that seem a little buried by the film’s glossy exterior. There are moments, however, so wrought with a quiet kind of pain that the film transcends its somewhat thin use of dialogue and lack of deep introspection. Instead of following a wholly linear narrative, Beautiful Boy lets viewers look through the eyes of a father who watches his son fall into the merciless cycle of addiction by stringing together a series of moments. What saves this film from wasting its emotional impact is a structure that reflects the patterns of memory, transporting audiences into the headspace of a parent who feels growing dread and helplessness while he watches a person he loves destroy himself.
“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And whatever walked there, walked alone.” So says the opening monologue of The Haunting of Hill House, Netflix’s latest horror series to drop during the Halloween season. A slow burn of anxiety that builds to smart and terrifying scares, Hill House is a meaty television series that explores family and the lasting effects of trauma.
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