Streaming Picks Archives - Critic Speak

Movie Review: “The Banshees of Inisherin”

James Frazier — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 19:20:22 +0000

You may have been cut loose by a friend at one time or another. I have, and I’ve been the one swinging the axe, though it’s the former perspective that interests me the most. What does it say about us when someone we like, even love, decides that our absence is the addition their life […]

The post Movie Review: “The Banshees of Inisherin” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Review: “Nomadland”

Danny Baldwin — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 23:32:10 +0000

Critics who write with their politics first have all too conveniently positioned “Nomadland,” the Oscar frontrunner of the case-sensitive Moment, as an indictment of individualism. But that’s frankly too easily; to position Frances McDormand’s Fern as a squeaky cog in the dirty machine of American capitalism is, frankly, to deny the real nuance of the […]

The post Review: “Nomadland” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “Marjorie Prime”

James Frazier — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 18:06:03 +0000

In a beautiful beachfront home, an elderly woman talks with her forty-something husband. In his soothing, crisp baritone voice, he tells her the story of the time he proposed to her. She likes this story, and all the other stories he tells. But the man in front of her isn’t really her husband, or even […]

The post Streaming Pick: “Marjorie Prime” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Review: “Bright”

James Frazier — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 03:42:41 +0000

“Bright” is ostensibly a police thriller set in a world where magic exists, but it comes with a clever thought under its high-concept premise: what does racism mean in a world where sentient creatures are literally of different species? Humans of different skin colors would seem pretty unremarkable to even the most virulent racist when […]

The post Review: “Bright” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “Man of Tai Chi”

JJ Perkins — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 20:15:20 +0000

Let’s not bury the lede here: Around the 57-minute mark of “Man of Tai Chi,” Keanu Reeves hisses like a dragon, mouth agape, straight into the camera, framed in close-up. If you can’t handle the intense lunacy of this moment, never add “Man of Tai Chi” to your Netflix list, never buy it on VOD, […]

The post Streaming Pick: “Man of Tai Chi” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “The Hunt”

JJ Perkins — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 02:47:30 +0000

Mads Mikkelsen has made a career out of playing monsters. His two most prominent roles (especially to American audiences), the “Casino Royale” villain Le Chiffre and the titular character on NBC’s “Hannibal,” have offered Mikkelsen opportunities to play all sides of the sick and the ruthless. As Le Chiffre, Mikkelsen was presented with an opportunity […]

The post Streaming Pick: “The Hunt” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “Drinking Buddies”

JJ Perkins — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 21:14:14 +0000

To exist is to crave companionship. From the earliest stages of our lives, we witness and are told explicitly and implicitly—by our parents, our neighbors, Disney films, television commercials—that to find a soul-mate, someone who you can share the whole of your being with, is what humanity has come to accept as the meaning of […]

The post Streaming Pick: “Drinking Buddies” appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “Dredd” (2012)

JJ Perkins — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 07:57:55 +0000

Contemporary mainstream action cinema is hurting. From the redundant stunt-casting of “The Expendables” franchise to the thirty-years-too-late Cold War thriller-aping antics of “Salt,” the genre has succumbed to the run-of-the-mill. But “Dredd” exists in direct opposition to this string of mediocrity. While there are other exceptions to the rule like “The Raid” (which bears more […]

The post Streaming Pick: “Dredd” (2012) appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “We Were Here” (2011)

Timothy Semenza — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:32:45 +0000

David Weissman and Bill Weber’s documentary “We Were Here” operates on two levels by providing both an overarching account of the 1980s San Francisco AIDS crisis and intimate portraits of five people who lived through it. The group of subjects, comprised of four men and a woman, offer a variety of perspectives: the guilt-ridden survivor, […]

The post Streaming Pick: “We Were Here” (2011) appeared first on Critic Speak.

Streaming Pick: “Post Mortem” (2010)

Timothy Semenza — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:05:54 +0000

The first film in Pablo Larraín’s Pinochet trilogy, 2008’s “Tony Manero,” took an inventive, circuitous approach in depicting the horrific oppression that Chileans suffered under the rule of a dictator. The second film, 2010’s “Post Mortem,” surpasses its predecessor in terms of bleakness and enigmatic acting, all the while raising compelling ideas about the role […]

The post Streaming Pick: “Post Mortem” (2010) appeared first on Critic Speak.