Month: January 2022
Home Team: Matter of inopportune timing
by Matt Ward
Super Bowl championship winning coach Sean Payton announced he was leaving his New Orleans Saints after 16 years with the franchise last week. Just days after his decision, a brand-new Netflix film about a pivotal moment in Payton’s coaching career ironically debuted focusing on yet another time Payton was away from his Saints. Home Team, a collaboration between Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions and … Read More Home Team: Matter of inopportune timing
Mass: Big drama in small spaces
by Matt Ward
Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival has always been the premiere way for independent filmmakers to debut their work and kick off a full year of promotion to find an audience. This year’s festival has gone digital due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19 preventing cinephiles from catching the best 2022 has to offer so far in person, but 2021 Sundance entries are making their … Read More Mass: Big drama in small spaces
The Tragedy of Macbeth: The weight of language
by Matt Ward
Adapting the works of William Shakespeare from the stage to the screen is a time-honored tradition of prestige filmmakers. Bringing the bard’s words to life in a way that casual audiences can understand and appreciate is perhaps the most difficult task of any director, theater or film. Shakespeare’s complicated lyrical prose uses far too many metaphors and overly floral language for the lay person … Read More The Tragedy of Macbeth: The weight of language
The Tender Bar: Uneven family drama
by Matt Ward
Slice of life Americana films only truly work about once in every six or seven attempts. Most of the time, these period-driven, small town family dramas attempt to bite off more than they can chew by introducing more characters than they can give adequate time to or by muddling the narrative with time jumps or by simply being bland. All these things, unfortunately, are … Read More The Tender Bar: Uneven family drama
Don’t Look Up: Stop worrying and love the comet
by Matt Ward
Stanley Kubrick made Dr. Strangelove, a quintessential black comedy of the 1960s starring Peter Sellers as a treatise against the uneasy relationship between America and Russia’s nuclear arms race. It’s one of the driest modern comedic films with a biting screenplay and pitch-perfect acting that fully realizes its auteur’s vision and works on numerous levels for casual as well as fully engaged audiences. Adam … Read More Don’t Look Up: Stop worrying and love the comet
Cinematic Considerations 