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This is another film in a recent trend I've noticed. There's been a trend of science-fiction or fantasy films featuring people of color, such as African-Americans and Latinos, specifically young African-Americans and Latinos in the lead role. The trend didn't perhaps start until Attack the Block (2011), which was an independent, British flick. An independent, American flick called Sleight (2017) was another such example, but it wasn't until A Wrinkle in Time (2018) that the trend became a more mainstream one. Since then, we've seen more mainstream hits like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019). Over the past year, Netflix has really run with this trend more than anyone else. As such, Netflix has given us See You Yesterday (2019), The Old Guard (2020) and Project Power (2020). Now, this one is another to add to the growing list. Directed and co-written by Emmy-winner Oz Rodriguez ( Saturday Night Live and A.P. Bio ), ...

Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer who has been working in the film industry for over 20 years. She's worked on numerous documentary films, including titles that have been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars. Examples are The Invisible War  (2012) and Citizenfour  (2014). The latter even won the Academy Award in that category. She even directed a few documentaries herself. Her most critically-acclaimed work was Cameraperson  (2016). In that film, Johnson introduced us to her mother who was ailing and in fact dying. This film could be considered a sequel to her 2016 work, which was a memoir of sorts. She continues in memoir mode, this time focusing her camera on her widowed father. There is some symmetry because seemingly Johnson's mother died of Alzheimer's. Ironically, her father is possibly developing the same disease. Whereas Johnson wasn't able to document her mother prior to her decline and eventual death, she is able to document her father and s...

In terms of films about war and depictions of certain real-life battles, the bar has been set with Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). This film doesn't exactly rise to that bar. However, if you look at the war films that have been nominated for Academy Awards over the past 20 years, even the Oscar for Best Picture, then I would argue that this film is just as good, if not better than those titles. It's not as much as a visual wonder and feat of great cinematography as 1917 (2019). It's not as much of a critique on war as Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) or The Hurt Locker (2009). It's not as jingoistic as American Sniper (2014) or evangelical as Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Unlike some of the war films, this one is trying to be a faithful depiction of one specific, real-life battle. It's not necessarily trying to tell a grander story about the overall conflict. It's also not trying to be a character study. It's simply trying to show how a group of...

At first, I thought this film might be a modern-day or Millennial version of Amadeus (1984). When it comes to artistic rivalry, one artist being jealous of another who's more successful or more famous, the Oscar-winning classic starring F. Murray Abraham as the iconic Antonio Salieri is the prime example. Yet, the idea of competitiveness and envy go rather quickly out the window, as this film, written and directed by Cory Wexler Grant, really establishes itself as being more about a woman dealing with loss and grief through an intense and controlling relationship where she stands as a rather domineering mentor and surrogate mother-figure. Betsy Randle ( Boy Meets World  and Home Improvement ) is that domineering mentor named Joanne Marco. She's a wealthy widow with a passion for art, specifically painting, having done some of which in her past. She also had a late son who was a painter as well. Her mentoring is perhaps masking a kind of substitution she's doing with the yo...

Cory Wexler Grant's debut feature Painter  (2020) premieres October 13 on digital platforms. The psychological thriller centers on a young artist who becomes the object of obsession for a wealthy, elder benefactor and gains in her a surrogate family member, sharing in his love and passion for the same visual medium. In an interview with Grant, he talked about himself being a young artist but not having a surrogate family but actual family members who also shared in his love and passion for visual media. Grant isn't a painter. He's an actor-turned-filmmaker. However, he says his mother was a painter. He referred to her as a "Sunday painter." She was talented but not committed, according to him. It might have been a hobby to her, but something that she thought wouldn't earn her any kind of profit. Grant's father was also an artist, a sculptor whose preferred medium was wood, or wooden objects. For Grant's father, it was more than just a Sunday dalliance...

This film is based on a play that premiered in 1968. It was such a success that it was adapted into a film in 1970. That play was revived on Broadway in 2018, marking the 50th anniversary. That 2018 version won Best Revival of a Play at the 73rd Tony Awards. This 2020 entry is an adaptation of that revival, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1970 film as well. Joe Mantello directed the Broadway revival. He also directs this film, retaining the entire 2018 cast. The play and film were about the lives of a group of gay men. At this point, this production is about the past lives of a group of gay men. Yet, despite being about lives 50 years ago, there is a lot that feels still relevant and true. Yes, there is a level of homophobia at work here and specifically self-loathing that perhaps wouldn't allow this particular story to be set in the actual year 2020. The majority of the film, as the play, occurs inside one man's apartment. The film allows for some glimpses of the world out...

August 13, 2018, a pregnant woman and her two daughters went missing from their suburban home, just north of Denver, Colorado. While police interviewed him, the husband to the woman and father to the daughters, 33-year-old Christopher Lee Watts admitted to killing all three of them and disposing of their bodies. It was a fairly open-and-shut case, mainly due to the guilt and/or stupidity of Watts. The reason he got caught is because he agreed to take a police's polygraph test three days after the crime, which he obviously failed. With not much prodding from police detectives, he cracked and confessed to his father who didn't seem to know that his son should have kept quiet or at least gotten a lawyer. Three months later, Watts pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, which essentially was the end of it. Directed by Jenny Popplewell, what makes this case outstanding is obviously the nature of the crime. Technically, Watts' crime didn't rise to the level of mas...