My Own Little World

I love dark humor. It always has a way of sticking out way more than conventional humor because it grabs me with its shock value, and when it’s done well, it can make me laugh harder and longer than just about anything else. Game Night thrives on this kind of comedy, which is part of what makes it as good as it is. I honestly was not expecting much of this movie when I saw the marketing for it, but it actually is a really solid film. It utilizes its premise very well, it twists its plot around in the right ways, and it also has some solid comedy that often takes a darker turn, further bolstered by great comedic performances. The premise of a friendly game night is one that I’m guessing most can relate to, and its familiarity makes Game Night so easy to latch onto. For one, it is not a premise that Hollywood has touched before, so that helps it tons; however, it also pokes a lot of fun at itself and furthermore the concept of groups of couples hanging out together. If it h...

Biopics typically err in one big way: they don’t feel true to the characters they portray and have that typical “Oscar-bait” tone. Films like The Imitation Game , The Theory of Everything , and even Hacksaw Ridge have all fallen into this mold; it’s not that they’re bad films, but they just don’t try to do anything but tell a positive story about their main character’s life. They are bland, plain and simple. Thankfully, I, Tonya doesn’t fit this mold at all. It follows more in the vein of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short in how it treats its subjects: there’s a lot of witty dark humor, and the tone is very much snarky sometimes but then gets a lot more serious as the story does. My problems with those two films I mention is that they can’t find the balance between the comedy and the drama, Wolf of Wall Street erring towards comedy and Big Short towards drama. I, Tonya has a smoother transition between those two tones, but it still does feel a bit abrupt, and ...

I have loved Aaron Sorkin for a long time. I first encountered his writing with The Social Network and fell in love with it watching The West Wing , The Newsroom , and Moneyball . He has a very unique style with fast, witty dialogue that says a lot in very little time; when combined with the walk-and-talk technique of The West Wing , it becomes an incredibly effective tool. I have never disliked his writing, even though it does get a little soapboxy from time to time. When I heard Sorkin was going to sit in the director’s chair for the first time, I got incredibly excited. I didn’t know what kind of visual style to expect from him, but I did know that the same writing that I fell in love with would be back in full effect. With Molly’s Game , Sorkin proves himself to be a competent but not (yet) adventurous director. There are parts of this film that definitely prove there is a lot of potential, but it’s not fulfilled here. Most of this I see through the film’s length: at two ...

Film has the potential to be one of the most impactful forms of media because it excites the most senses: we can see, hear, and emotionally feel for everything that is happening on screen. We don’t always need big spectacles to do this for us either; sometimes, the smaller and more intimate a film is, the more impact it can have on the viewer. I recently saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , a well-written character-driven mystery that has at its core a really unique portrayal of forgiveness and reconciliation. I think for a time like we are in now, this is a film that everybody must see. It doesn’t become overly political, and it doesn’t try to force these hefty themes: it simply tells a human story. The most central element to Three Billboards is the writing, both of the story and the screenplay. Martin McDonagh, the film’s director and writer, is actually best known for his plays, and that style of writing shows up constantly in this film. The dialogue is meaty...