Historical
Film Review – I Swear
It’s unfortunate that this past BAFTA Awards was tainted over the “controversy” surrounding John Davidson and the film about his life, I Swear (2025). The incident, involving Davidson (who has Tourette’s syndrome) and actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, created a heated and ugly online whirlwind in which people felt…
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Film Review – The Optimist
World War II and The Holocaust continues to be a source of endless stories, whether it is about military strategy, unspeakable horror, or profound acts of humanity. Writer/director Finn Taylor’s The Optimist (2023) recounts the true story of Herbert Heller, a Jew from Czechoslovakia who – along…
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Film Review – The Big Fake
Despite looking great, the Italian film The Big Fake (2026) covers too familiar a path without adding enough of a twist to stand on its own. From its visuals, characters, rhythms, and tones, the narrative is too derivative of other historical crime dramas. In that way, the…
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Film Review – Nouvelle Vague
The French New Wave has become such a milestone in the history of cinema that it risks being under appreciated. Take any film course and you’ll eventually arrive at it. It’s a major inflection point – we can see the change in filmmaking technique almost…
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Film Review – Christy
Credit should go to Sydney Sweeney for not taking the easy route with her film career. Any lesser actor would coast on their movie star popularity for bland gigs that pay well but offer little artistic challenge. That’s not the case for Sweeney. Yes, we’ve seen her…
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Film Review – Who Killed the Montreal Expos?
Who Killed the Montreal Expos? (2025) comes at a peculiar time for me. As of this writing, I just witnessed my beloved Seattle Mariners lose Game 7 of the American League Championship Series – in heartbreaking fashion – to another Canadian baseball team, the Toronto Blue…
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Film Review – Dongji Rescue
There are sequences in the Chinese film Dongji Rescue (2025) that are breathtaking. Set primarily in or around the ocean, scenes feature characters swimming across choppy water, diving deep under the surface with no oxygen, or flinging themselves off sinking boats. These instances are so believable that…
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Film Review – Queen of the Ring
Queen of the Ring (2024) tells the story of Mildred Burke (Emily Bett Rickards), who helped usher in the popularity of women’s professional wrestling in the 1930s and into the 1950s. We first meet Mildred as a single mother, living in Kansas working as a waitress…
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