PODCAST: Whiplash (feat. Tessa Scott) [Movie Robcast]

*SPOILER WARNING* – This episode features Whiplash spoilers throughout, including discussion of the plot twists and the film’s climax.  

Episode 92 of The Movie Robcast sees Robs Daniel & Wallis looking back at Damien Chazelle’s blistering, Oscar-winning 2014 debut, Whiplash; a strong contender for Rob W.’s…

CINEMATIC GRAB-BAG: The Lego Batman Movie, Toni Erdmann, & Gold

The Lego Batman Movie

“All important movies start with a black screen…”

If there’s one thing you can say about The Lego Batman Movie, it’s that it’s very self-aware. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very self-aware.

A War loses sight of its dramatic conflict amid the haze of moral relativism

 

Few scenarios lend themselves to dramatization better than the battlefield and the courtroom.

The blood and chaos of the former; the eloquence and order of the latter. What Tobias Lindholm’s recent Best Foreign Language nominee, A War, does is reveal the paradox of trying to impose the process of law after the fact.…

Spotlight digs deep and finds light in the darkness

 

Spotlight opens at a police station circa 1976 where representatives of the Church, in conjunction with an Assistant DA, are participating in hushing up one such incident.

“I guess the Father was ‘helping out’”, a stocky old-timer wryly comments to a redheaded rookie as a likely sex offender is ushered into the back of a snow-frosted black sedan and away from prosecution.…

Foxcatcher is a frigid masterpiece about the pursuit of championship

 

Of all the things to confront in life, failure is perhaps the hardest.

How it reflects on us, and we on it, and our desperation to avoid it are universal facts of human existence. Foxcatcher is the second title to feature at this year’s London Film Festival that can be aptly summarized as a “psychotic coach drama” – the first being Whiplash; though the two films are in many ways polar opposites.…

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a confectionary treat

 

Whether you love him, hate him, or are simply indifferent, you have to admit that Wes Anderson is a unique director.

More so than any other filmmaker at work today, he has a personal style to which he is beholden.…

Dallas Buyers Club is a life-affirming tonic of a film

 

If ever there was a film that just may have conceived to mint Oscars, Dallas Buyers Club might be it.

It concerns the exploits of a homophobic cowboy, Ron Woodroof, who contracts AIDS and pairs up with trans woman, Rayon, to begins selling unapproved drugs to the Dallas gay community.…