As a whole, I’m not entirely certain what Licorice Pizza, the new 70s-set coming-of-age film from Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), amounts to. Pieces are absolutely magical, full of joy and whimsy. Others…are a bit more problematic, at best; downright cringe-inducing at worst. It watches like a movie where the filmmaker has zero checks and balances, able to indulge any and every flight of fancy with no oversight. Which is both a good and bad thing by turns. This freedom allows PTA to indulge himself; the flipside of that is, of course, overindulgence.
Around these parts, we’re big fans of Robert Eggers. When you go back to back with The Witch and The Lighthouse right out of the gate, we’re going to pay attention. And damn, the first trailer for his upcoming Viking vengeance tale, The Northman, does not disappoint. Check it out below.
Let’s be honest, no one gives a damn what I think about Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latest in the complicated Marvel/Sony/etc. wall-crawler relationship. So, here’s the short version: it’s fine, 100% fine. It will honestly probably sound like I hated it, but I didn’t, it’s enjoyable enough, though entirely toothless, even by Marvel standards.
Are you ready for the most Nicolas Cage movie that Nicolas Cage ever Nicolas Cage-d? If that sentence seems awesome instead of like gibberish, you may be ready for the first trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
A low-budget, Dolph Lundgren-directed, Scott Adkins-starring DTV action film. If those words mean anything to you, and if they do and they pique your interest in a positive way, Castle Falls has something for you.
Abel Ferrara’s pandemic-shot terrorism thriller, Zeros and Ones, presents a difficult mystery to unravel. In the end, it remains to be seen whether or not finding a concrete solution is even entirely possible, but the sparse, lean, meditative tale offers an esoteric and, most importantly, compelling journey of obtuse motivations, dubious loyalties, and looming violence.
The near-ish future of Night Raiders, writer/director Danis Goulet’s debut feature, sets up a dystopian society where an oppressive government requires children under 18 be placed in the Academy, a kind of militarized boarding school that brainwashes and programs kids. Niska (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) lives off the grid in the wilderness, sheltering her daughter, Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), from such a fate. When Waseese is taken, Niska falls in with a group of Indigenous resistance fighters led by Ida (Gail Maurice, Trickster) and Leo (Alex Tarrant, NCIS: Hawaii) to liberate her and other children.
