The Foxy Film Fan

Directed by Aneesh Chaganty and starring John Cho, Searching  is a 2018 thriller which was tragically overlooked. It's the first mainstream Hollywood thriller staring an Asian-American actor, and Cho proves himself as a phenomenal actor who is capable of carrying the film entirely on his own shoulders. The directing, acting, and story are all absolutely phenomenal, and I really must urge everyone who reads this to seek this movie out (currently it's available on Vudu and Amazon Prime for purchase, unfortunately I don't think you can rent it anywhere right now). The film has one gimmick similar to that of Unfriended . You know, that awful 2015 horror movie where you watch some rude teenagers get killed off by the ghost of the girl they bullied to the point of suicide? Yeah. Searching  is told entirely through computer screens, webcams, emails, phone calls, and various other types of modern technology. However, the gimmick works in the case of this film. It feels natur

This review contains spoilers for the movie Midsommar. Midsommar is a film which I have complicated feelings toward. In some aspects it's perfect. Visually, it's stunning, and the bright flower specked landscapes linger through the horror. I love the concept of a horror movie where daylight is not safer than the darkness, and I love the strange visual effects which make the plants and flowers breathe and pulse slowly. In other ways it feels restrained. The run-time was cut drastically, and it leaves certain aspects feeling underdeveloped (such as the "unclouded" who frantically scribble the community's holy texts). The film was intended to be a full half-hour longer, and I imagine losing that footage is the reason the movie feels rather incomplete. Don't get me wrong, Midsommar is good, but it doesn't feel fully realized. Our protagonist Dani is desperately clinging to a failing relationship after the loss of her family. Her uninterested boyfriend

Directed by Alexandre Aja and produced by the legendary Sam Raimi, Crawl  is the first movie to nearly give me a physical panic attack. Kaya Scodelario plays Haley, a swimmer who visits her estranged father (Barry Pepper) during a Category 5 hurricane to make sure he evacuates safely. Her rescue mission turns into the pair swimming, crawling, and climbing for their lives as they dodge the gaping maws of alligators which have made their way into the home's basement. Horror movies which spend the majority of their run-time in a single setting tend to grow old quickly, but Crawl chooses not to waste time (or scares). The CGI alligators have a real presence throughout the film, and with the movie's minimal soundtrack their every splash and snarl reverberates throughout the cavernous basement. I'm not claustrophobic, nor am I particularly scared of alligators (or at least I wasn't prior to seeing Crawl ), but Aja's sparing use of the camera flowing seamlessly unde

Like many others, I was introduced to Taika Waititi through his satirical vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows  (written and directed alongside costar Jemaine Clement). It was funny enough for me to seek out and watch his heartfelt Hunt for the Wilderpeople starring Sam Neill. I even enjoyed and rewatched Thor: Ragnarok . So, I like Waititi's work, I like his style which emulates Wes Anderson but aspires to much more than settling for the wit and charm of Anderson's work. Waititi's Jojo Rabbit  doesn't just aim to tell a story, it aims to communicate the way a horrific ideology can spread like a wildfire through children. In some instances Jojo Rabbit  gives you emotional whiplash. One moment you're accompanying our clever child protagonist on his adventures around Berlin, and the next you're faced with the horrors of war as a civilian in Nazi Germany. However, this whiplash is crucial to truly understanding how the joy of the privileged in Berlin could

Disney's vault of animated films are widely renowned classics of a bygone era where children's movies were thought provoking and fun for the whole family. Live action remakes of these classics are shambling hollow shells of what they once were, and Disney's live action remake of Lady and the Tramp  is no different. The real-life dogs used in the film are instantly transformed into horrific monsters dwelling in the depths of the uncanny valley the moment they open their bizarre CGI mouths and begin to speak, and the cats who frame poor Lady for demolishing her family's home are a hideous pair. The original music is left unscathed, save for the controversial Siamese cat song from the 1955 animated version which is replaced with a terrible jazz song that fails to blend in alongside the rest of the film's musical number. In every way imaginable, Lady and the Tramp  (2019) lacks subtlety. From the way the pair of cats demolish every inch and corner of Lady's

Directed by Robert Eggers of The VVitch fame, The Lighthouse  stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as a pair of lighthouse keepers whose isolation drives them to madness. Both actors put forth incredible performances, and Robert Pattinson continues to show his phenomenal skills as an actor who is still unfairly connected to a movie series he starred in a decade ago. Pattinson takes on the role of a silent man who wants to just do his job and leave, whereas Dafoe is the old eccentric who switches from antagonizing his young assistant one moment to demanding he speak up and swap a few stories (maybe even enjoy a few drinks). Visually, the film is hypnotic. The black and white shots of ocean waves crashing against the shore and storms rolling through in the distance left me in absolute awe. Its accompanying score is comprised of slow droning horns and strings which gradually get louder and fade into long gaps of silence, not unlike the bellows of the lighthouse itself. The sound

Stephen King movie adaptations and I have had a tumultuous relationship at best. I like  many of them -  Misery  gave Kathy Bates the opportunity to demonstrate her incredible acting skills (but muddled the creeping terror of the book by introducing a friendly bumbling cop for us to keep up with), Thinner  was terrible, the 2019  Pet Sematary  remake was painful to sit through, It Chapter Two  tricked the audience into watching the same sequence of events over and over again, nobody watched (or liked) The Dark Tower , and Netflix's In the Tall Grass tried its best. Of course there are the classics like Stand By Me , The Green Mile , Shawshank Redemption , and 1408  (I'm kidding, I just have a soft spot for that one in particular). Then there's The Shining . I want to acknowledge something briefly, before I delve into praising this work of art. Stanley Kubrick abused Shelley Duvall horrifically to force her into a deteriorating mental state. She was not willingly exp

Parasite  is the newest film from director Bong Joon-Ho, who is most well known for his films Snowpiercer and Okja . The former is class struggle shrunk down to play out on a massive train with incredible poverty and extreme wealth, and the latter focuses on the story of a girl traveling from her home in the mountains of South Korea to America in order to track down her animal friend which was taken from her by a corrupt corporation. Class is a big deal in Bong Joon-Ho's work, and he especially focuses on the way those in positions of wealth and power live completely oblivious to the plight of those struggling to make ends meet. Snowpiercer was an allegory for class warfare, but Parasite  is an uncomfortable up-close depiction of the real thing. Bong Joon-Ho's newest film is a picture of the desperation of poverty, and the impossible task put upon the lower class to simply climb the ladder (or spiral staircase) themselves. Plans in the Kim family fail so often they know t

Bathed in golden hues, The King  tells the story of King Henry V with heavy inspiration from the plays of William Shakespeare. Timothée Chalamet stars as the titular king, and it's a difficult role to take on. Henry undergoes three key internal transformations throughout the course of the nearly three hour film, but Chalamet handles each subtle shift in personality with the dignity the role deserves.  There are brief instances where the film fumbles, particularly in the strangely sanitized way it depicts the future king's reckless lifestyle prior to his position in power. The film shows him hungover, and we see him with a fully clothed woman beside him in his bed on a couple of occasions, but it fails to properly depict him as the failure everyone in the film sees him as. After his newfound role as king there are some slower scenes to slog through, but once France (and Robert Pattinson's performance as The Dauphin of France) make an appearance the film succeeds in f