The Film Gang from KSQD

  One of the main themes of the instant Swedish classic from 2009, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is, “Everybody’s got secrets.” It’s also the personal aphorism of its central character – the young, mysterious, professional hacker, Lisbeth Salander, aka, Wasp. Her enigmatic persona is instantly established the moment she appears onscreen, creating an […]

  In 1991, Julie Dash made history with her debut film, Daughters of the Dust, which she wrote, directed and produced. It was the first movie made by an African-American woman shown in theaters across the country. A striking and original piece of film art, Daughters of the Dust is fictional, but inspired by Dash’s […]

  Before winning an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, and before breathing new life into MCU’s withering Thor franchise, Taika Waititi was New Zealand’s most popular and successful filmmaker. Two of his homegrown films, 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople and 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, became international cult hits. But one of his lesser-known […]

  Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is the superior half of a two-part revenge epic, and one of the best film of 2004. In Kill Bill: Vol. 1, released the year prior, a former assassin known as The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, was betrayed and left for dead, ostensibly on her wedding day, […]

  Every so often a really good movie will undeservedly fail at the box office. Bad timing, the marketing challenges of outside-the-box storytelling, or even its title can undermine theatrical success. But films that go on to develop a large and enthusiastic fan base in the home-video market are often far more interesting than profitable […]

  The main advantage of being a low-budget indie filmmaker is having the freedom to be creative without the interference of micro-controlling studio executives wanting to produce a mainstream product. Take, for example, David Lowery. In 2017, fresh off his $65 million collaboration with Disney to bring the live-action version of Pete’s Dragon to the […]

  “I know that nothing can change, and I know there is no hope.” So says Ethan Hawke as the despairing Reverend Toller in the compelling drama, First Reformed. First Reformed, released theatrically in the first half of 2018, was written and directed by Paul Schrader, one of the essential voices of the New Hollywood […]

  Youthful exuberance runs afoul of archaic traditions in the 2015 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Mustang. Five young orphaned sisters, living together in the Turkish countryside with their grandmother and uncle, have just finished another school year. On their way home, excited by the start of summer and still fully clothed in […]

  (Dennis Morton and I, as hosts of the KSQD Film Gang, have always reviewed current theatrical releases, believing that movies are at their best when enjoyed the way they were intended – on the big screen and with an audience. But most important is the film itself, regardless of how and where it’s viewed. […]

  A simple story of love and love lost becomes a feminist polemic and a meditation on the sensuality of seeing, and being seen, in the new French film by writer/director Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It’s the late 1800’s, and Marianne, an art instructor, is modeling for her class of aspiring […]

  With the new sci-fi/action/thriller, The Invisible Man, director Leigh Whannell has created a feminist re-imagining of the classic H.G. Welles novel. The titular character isn’t a mad scientist with a god complex, but someone much more zeitgeisty: a sociopathic, narcissistic, one-percenter. And unlike previous adaptations, he’s not even the main focus of the story. […]

  Inherent discrepancies exist between who we truly are, how others perceive us, and how we consciously and unconsciously choose to view ourselves. In our average day-to-day lives, such differences rarely matter. But what if a potentially life threatening situation triggers an ignominious act of instinctive self-preservation that can’t be glossed over or ignored? That […]

  KSQD’s Film Gang has been remiss in not yet reviewing one of the most acclaimed films of 2019, the South Korean dark comedy, Parasite, written, produced and directed by Bong Joon-ho. Hopefully this review will not only serve as a corrective but will inspire foreign-language-averse moviegoers to give it a chance. As Bong Joon-ho […]

  It’s Oscar season, and just when it looked like all prestige films have been accounted for, 1917, the World War I drama directed by Sam Mendes, snuck up from behind with a last minute, end-of-year release date in select markets, just in time to qualify for 2019 award consideration. Since then, it’s won Golden […]

  In 1868, feminist and abolitionist Louisa May Alcott published the first of her two-part semi-autobiographical novel, Little Women. It tells the story of four sisters – Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth – growing up in Massachusetts during the mid 1800s. Their father has gone off to join the Union army. The eldest sisters, Jo […]

  For those of us too young to remember, a security guard named Richard Jewell discovered a backpack bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It exploded shortly after, resulting in two deaths and over one hundred injuries. But if it hadn’t been for Jewell, who also aided in clearing crowds away from the device, the […]

  The following is a spoiler-free review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Star Wars has gone through three evolutionary stages. The first trilogy of films captured the spirit of the Saturday afternoon movie serials produced during the golden age of Hollywood. Imaginative world-building and unambiguous good versus evil storylines provided state of the […]

  Honey Boy, the winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, starts off with a literal bang: a young man getting blown backwards by an explosion. The smoke clears to reveal he’s an actor on a movie set, tethered to a rope, dangling above smoldering wreckage. His name is Otis, […]

  Martin Scorsese has directed comedies, biopics, documentaries, period pieces – even a musical. However, the one genre Scorsese is going to be forever associated with is the crime drama, in no small part thanks to the indelible performances of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in 1990’s Goodfellas and 1995’s Casino. For his latest […]

  For over four decades, renowned Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar has been creating melodramatic works of art conveying his unique perspective on post-Francoist Spain, strong women, family, sexuality, and filmmaking itself. With semi-autobiographical elements sprinkled throughout, Almadóvar’s Palme d’Or-nominated film, Pain and Glory, is one of his most personal works to date, and despi...

  In 2016, writer/director Robert Eggers gifted us with The Witch, an auspicious first film that helped add the phrase “elevated horror” to the critical lexicon as a shorthand way of describing creative aspirations above and beyond cheap jump scares and gratuitous gore. With his second film, The Lighthouse, a surreal thriller about a couple […]

  “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” That’s the question asked by the titular character of Joker, a film that luxuriates in giving us the answer. By now, anyone with a pulse knows that Joker is the origin story […]

  Earlier this year, the Sundance Film Festival awarded its Grand Jury Prize to The Souvenir, written and directed by British Indie director, Joanna Hogg. Largely autobiographical, The Souvenir is pieced together from Hogg’s decades-old diaries, love letters and audio recordings, and it tells the story of her tragic May-December romance during the early ‘80s […]

  One of the sure signs of a great performance is when it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the role. Such is the case with Renée Zellweger’s portrayal of Frances Ethel Gumm, a.k.a., Judy Garland, in the biopic, Judy. Loosely adapted from the Olivier-nominated stage play, End of the Rainbow, Judy swings back and […]

  At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it was Honeyland, a documentary about a beekeeper, which generated the most buzz. It took home three awards, more than any other film in competition, and it’s North Macedonia’s official submission in this year’s Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature. Honeyland is an intimate window into the life […]