the kino park

a stunning moment in Chloe Zhao's Hamnet *I don't spoil either film here besides the loose concept that sad things happen in both movies.* Tragedy in a film is something easily approached, but delicately, if not even precariously, executed. Tightrope walking upon the razor thin margin of error for a film to effectively employ a tragic turn of plot all too easily slides into melodrama at best and outright exploitation at worst. Some films and stories have handily approached this by leaning into the knee jerk reactions of its potential, like Titanic for example, a film which takes tragedy as the very focal point of its exploration. Others, like adaptations of Shakespeare, though he very well might have invented the western world's approach to dramatic tragedy, center the film around inherent flaws within its characters and thereby mine tragedy via humanistic study. One of the most difficult tricks to pull is to maintain both the weight of tragedy and a nuanced and grounded co...

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...