Month: November 2020
Hillbilly Elegy: In search of Oscar gold
by Matt Ward
Hillbilly Elegy has everything awards season voters seem to want in a best picture contender. It’s a film with A-list actors giving showy performances in an adaptation of a true story from an Academy Award winning director set in the recent past that gives insight into the current political climate. There’s plenty of golden reasons why Netflix paid $45 million in January for the … Read More Hillbilly Elegy: In search of Oscar gold
Mulan: Finally worth a watch
by Matt Ward
Every film has a price tag to be seen. Some movies you’d pay full price to see on opening weekend. Others are rentals for home viewing that cost a couple dollars or streaming movies that feel free because you don’t have to pay extra for seeing them. And then there’s also those movies that people would have to pay you to watch. Over the … Read More Mulan: Finally worth a watch
The Nest: Horrors of a failing marriage
by Matt Ward
Horror films do not have to be scary to be effective. There doesn’t need to be scenes of bombastic violence or frightening jump scares to heighten the tension. Sometimes the most terrifying things in cinema come from slowly built, meticulously crafted inevitability. In that sense, writer/director Sean Durkin’s latest film is incredibly haunting, simply by focusing on a looming sense of doom in a … Read More The Nest: Horrors of a failing marriage
Holidate: A partner for all seasons
by Matt Ward
Fresh off of Halloween and on the way to more family holidays, Netflix is bound to cash in on the dearth of end of the year films with a number of seasonally themed features. Their newest hit, which has topped the streaming service’s most-watched charts in the United States since its debut two weeks ago, is an objectively bad movie that knows its limitations … Read More Holidate: A partner for all seasons
The Way I See It: Capturing humanity in a single frame
by Matt Ward
Pete Souza has had an inside look at Washington politics for decades. He’s been in the room for countless national crises, meetings with foreign leaders and hundreds of White House press events without anyone ever really knowing his name. As the official photographer for both the Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama administrations, Souza has seen intimate moments on both sides of the aisle and … Read More The Way I See It: Capturing humanity in a single frame
Cinematic Considerations 