the kino park

Emma Stone is our greatest actor * loose allusions to the film's conclusion, but otherwise no spoilers* Provocation. In a direct inverse, though certainly of a similar kind, to this year’s excellent Eddington, even sharing an Ari Aster between them, comes the latest Emma Stone/Jesse Plemmons/Yorgos Lanthimos hitter Bugonia , and like 2024's Kinds of Kindness , it is a movie of deferred provocation. Where Eddington elected for an overt political approach, Bugonia shows us a world certainly colored in those delusions, strifes and oppressions, but one that falls far less one for one. There are metaphors and images here ripe for political dissemination, yet thanks largely to Lanthimos’ capable, ever devious, hand, never is one single topic permitted to overpower the material. While a film featuring a Green Day centered torture scene could probably never truly be called subtle, the resulting film is one providing a satirical and explosive exploration of a world flattening itself, a...

Jacob Elordi gives nothing short of a mesmerizing performance * this review is spoiler free, though it mentions a lot about Frankenstein in all its forms*   Sometimes a movie is good because it is innovative, either within narrative, craft or form, it functions in a way never before done. Sometimes the flowers a film receives come because it gives us some new perspective, maybe even falling into that award season trap of “importance,” causing the praise to then flow forth of necessity. Even further some films are good seemingly simply because they can’t help it, an occurrence usually thanks to some alchemy of both previous considerations, a mixture of theme, creator and function that proves too intoxicating, too “great,” to receive anything but the utmost respect. Within all of these, rather invented, designations, there are then even further those pictures which are great for some ethereal quality within their frames, one almost difficult to name or place. Films where the greatnes...

One of Greta Lee's past lives I suppose *a spoiler free review* Whether in fact due to its own uselessness or even perhaps a better word would be unworthiness, any kind of thematic engagement with Tron: Ares seems about as productive as expecting its lead actor to be able to successfully open a film. While in another world maybe the movie’s swan dive into a cesspool of current issues could be commended, both those inherent to its premise and even some that seem unnecessarily added, its abject failure to approach anything even resembling an insight seems so glaringly obvious that to point this out conjures mostly just a feeling of thuddening inanity. Why spend undue energy acknowledging that while yes, making some consideration into AI was probably inevitable for a film in the Tron- verse, the fact that the film centers around dueling billionaires, locked in a tech war, was not a choice that needed to be made for a movie about sentient video games. It’s choices of this ilk and their...

   you can almost hear how badly film twitter wants to call him unrecognizable here *no spoilers here really, though I guess I mention general ideas related to the movie*           To talk of The Smashing Machine is really to talk of its star. This of course is the wrestler turned actor turned marketing maniac, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a hulking mass of human muscle whose “films” of the last several years, or perhaps more fittingly brand extension campaigns, are essentially synonymous with the least critically acclaimed movies of the decade. Whether you are thinking of Red One, Red Notice, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or Jungle Cruise , these are films about as acclaimed as their titles are diverse. While past movie stars of his luster and caliber were at least occasionally interested in lending their influence to more, to put it bluntly, artfully driven work, for some time Dwayne Johnson has been seemingly deadset on a spiral of increasingl...