Unfortunate timing and unfortunate decisions mire this week’s The Romanoffs, leaving great performers with little to work with.
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A new Era of film coverage: FilmEra offers cinephiles a platform from which to voice their perspectives on visual media (Film, TV), to challenge the reader’s expectations of what media conveys–regardless of whether that media was released today or decades in the past.
Category: Reviews
Latest reviews from all era of film.
Saturday Night Live – Season 44, Episode 3: Seth Meyers/Paul Simon
The latest episode of Saturday Night Live was a perfect encapsulation of everything that is wrong with this show. It managed to combine all of its worst elements: a host drawing back upon past successes, […]
Carrie
Brian De Palma’s Carrie is an anxious champion of cinematic storytelling. The film wastes no time tinkering with conventionalized scares, instead choosing to cultivate terror through the intimate examination of a tormented young woman and […]
Castlevania: Season Two
Castlevania is a Netflix animated series based on a classic video game series from the eighties. It is written by Warren Ellis, executive produced by Adi Shankar, and animated with a heavily-influenced-by-anime style reminiscent of […]
Room 237
A movie, freed from the shackles of auteurism, has a life of its own. It exists as a text of its own, influencing the lives of others in ways the original author may not have […]
The Shining
There is a certain generation of directors whose filmography would span genres and they would use their unique voice to tell all sorts of stories with equal parts respect and creativity. Every director would have […]
Barry: Season One
A comedy about a hardened criminal immersing himself into the world of aspiring actors and acting classes? Honestly, sounds like an 80s Kindergarten Cop sort of scenario without nearly as much Schwarzenegger entertainment value. A drama […]
TWIST Film Festival: The Happy Prince
Nobody is very happy in The Happy Prince. This is Rupert Everett’s directorial debut, where his celebrity has afforded him the opportunity to play Oscar Wilde. If The Happy Prince has any sense of joy […]
House of Cards: Season Six
A strong return in its final season, Robin Wright dominates the show as she rightfully claims her place.
Project Gutenberg
Felix Chong’s latest features a compelling trio of performances in service of flimsy and derivative plotting.
The Romanoffs: “Expectation”
A look at getting older and promises made and promises kept delivers a very good episode of The Romanoffs.
Homecoming: Season One
Homecoming delivers one of 2018’s best, a thriller about betterment, memory, and perception.
The Hate U Give
The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman, Jr. and written by Audrey Wells, is a powerful and emotionally mature discussion about police brutality disguised as a teen film. It reveals its intentions in its […]
Black Sunday
If you’re looking for Satan, Victorian-era clothing, and enough atmosphere to cook a thick soup in a black cauldron, then you’ve come to the right place, as Black Sunday has those in spades. Released in 1960, Mario […]
Halloween (2018)
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. “Fate is immovable, like a mountain. It stands where man passes away. Fate never changes.” These words, spoken from John Carpenter’s Halloween, are spoken […]
Making A Murderer, Part Two
A return to the scene finds new life, but with less to talk about, Part Two can feel a little slow.
Black Lightning – Season 2, Episode 1: “The Book of Consequences: Chapter One: Rise of the Green Light Babies”
Black Lightning is back on the air and this season starts off with a powerful opening. A black teenager is assaulted and killed by police officers as bystanders look on in fear. Why was this […]
Things To Come (L’avenir)
Parisienne philosophy professor Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) finds herself at odds when a series of dismaying events occur which leave her completely untethered and surprisingly free. Having arrived at her midlife chock-full of wisdom and stability, […]
Halloween 2 (2009)
Author’s Note: This Review is for the Director’s Cut of the Film For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Despite the negative reception to 2007’s Halloween remake, along with a […]
Don’t Breathe
Home invasion is a common archetype among horror movies. There is no more unsettling sense of violation than the malign unknown turning a sacred sanctuary into a hostile environment where the protagonist must fight tooth […]
Thunder Road
Austin, Texas is a center for humanist, independent cinema. It is also my hometown. If you grow up in such a market and see the kinds of success that comes from Austin, a general idea […]
Halloween (2007)
Author’s Note: This Review is for the Director’s Cut of the Film For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. The Halloween series sat in limbo after the negative reaction to […]
Halloween: Resurrection
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. This should not have happened! However, it did, and viewers are left with the results. As a response to Halloween: H20’s reception (a […]
The Romanoffs: “House of Special Purpose”
Something is wrong in “House of Special Purpose”, as we find Christina Hendricks trying to understand her place in madness.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers almost really did it, meaning it was almost responsible for the death of the series. This might […]
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Season One
A great new series from Netflix, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a fun season of television with a great lead performance in Kiernan Shipka.
TWIST Film Festival: TransMilitary
The problem of art is that it’s rarely viewed by the audience who needs to see it. Here we have TransMilitary, a significant document that could cause a course-correction in the hearts and minds of […]
First Man
At first glance, a Neil Armstrong biopic might seem like a peculiar choice for Damien Chazelle, coming off the heels of his deeply personal one-two punch of Whiplash and La La Land. Those films, as […]
TWIST Film Festival: L’Animale
L’Animale is an Austrian film of straightforward quality and beauty. It concerns young Mati (Sophie Stockinger) who must choose between her motocross with the boys and following her heart’s desire when a new girl moves […]
Beautiful Boy
Much has been said about the pairing of Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell in Felix Van Groeningen’s latest film Beautiful Boy, which follows a father grappling with the reality of his son’s addiction to crystal […]
Halloween 6: The Producer’s Cut
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers: the gift that keeps on giving. A film so bad there are two versions available for the […]
Apostle
Welsh director Gareth Evans made a name for himself with the bone-crunching Indonesian action movies The Raid and The Raid 2, introducing the world to the Silat martial arts style and reinvigorating the genre in […]
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Jack Black returns in a new Goosebumps adventure, but don’t expect the bumps to goose ya this time.
CTIFMF 2018: Rafiki
Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki is a tender and beautifully told story of forbidden lesbian romance in Kenya. This is a defiant depiction of hope and self expression set in a place where gay sex is punishable […]
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Oh boy, so it’s come to this? The appropriate reaction upon finishing a viewing of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers is […]
Bad Times At The El Royale
Considering director Drew Goddard’s previous movie, no doubt many will be entering Bad Times At The El Royale scanning for clues and hints from frame one. Cabin In The Woods was a movie that took […]
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Despite only making a few million more than Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was […]
Daredevil: Season Three
An exceptional return, Daredevil is back with its best season yet.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers represents a turning point for the series, which had until this point benefited from the […]
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a film ahead of its time, but not in any way related to the kind […]
Lore: Season Two
With a larger focus on re-enactments, Lore delivers a stronger second season diving into the horrors of the past.
Doctor Who – Season 11, Episode 1: “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”
Season Eleven of Doctor Who sees British favourite Jodie Whittaker as the latest incarnation of the titular character and the first ever female version. Her companions come in the form of Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, […]
Better Call Saul – Season 4, Episode 10: “Winner”
Author’s note: This article CONTAINS SPOILERS for the episode of discussion and all episodes of the series that have preceded it. Here we arrive at the season finale of the fourth season of Better Call […]
Saturday Night Live – Season 44, Episode 2: Awkwafina/Travis Scott
Following last week’s polarizing premier, Saturday Night Live settled into its more traditional and uninteresting form. As questionable as Kanye’s presentation was last week, one thing it succeeded in doing was getting people talking about […]
Johnny English Strikes Again
My mother has only seen two movies this year. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, and this latest Johnny English outing. When asked why she watches so few, she’ll say she can’t find the time […]
Halloween II
For more Halloween coverage by FilmEra, check out the Halloween Series Hub Page. John Carpenter hit it big with the release of Halloween, which became the highest grossing independent picture at the time, and it […]
Lodge 49, Episode Ten: “Full Fathom Five”
A great end to a great series.
Malevolent
I just want a quiet house. I thought that if you could hear the voices, you’d be able to stop them. It’s that time of year when a multitude of horror films come out during […]
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Things I Know What You Did Last Summer has: a pale corpse-ish looking Jennifer Love Hewitt as quiet protagonist Julie, a stress-smoking anti-Buffy Summers Sarah Michelle Gellar as Helen, two unintelligent Ken-dolls, and a road […]
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Filmera is having a viewing party with this movie this tonight, Sunday, October 7th! We start the film at 8PM. Feel free to join us on Twitter for discussion. This review does not contain important […]
One-Eyed Jacks
“Now let’s see the kinda stuff you’re made of.” The most famous role Marlon Brando played—years before Don Vito Corleone or Colonel Walter E. Kurtz—was that of Terry Malloy, a poor dockworker, in Elia Kazan’s On […]
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Let’s be clear: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in a masterclass of its own. Director Tobe Hooper found genius in presenting horror as documentary. Well ahead of the found footage boom, he predicted the modern […]
LA Film Festival: The Advocates
The state of California is in a housing crisis. Gone are the days of the California Dream, when a person could realistically expect, so long as they had a decent job, to own a modest […]
Venom
Venom finally hits the big screen in his own movie, but was it worth the wait? No, it wasn’t.
Assassination Nation
Assassination Nation is like an evening spent on Facebook, an exhausting stream of righteousness and outrage presented as the status quo. It willfully exclaims all of its most outrageous moments within the first moment, flashing […]
Into the Dark: “The Body”
It’s a lot easier to drag a body across town on Halloween, as “The Body” proves.
Thelma
Why can’t I just be what I am? Why isn’t that possible? An orchestral crescendo rises and promptly falls as the opening credits drift into a frigid scene. A young six-year-old girl bundled up in […]
Frightmare
It is a great pleasure to do the review for this British horror film. One goal I have in writing the reviews that I do is to share the excitement I feel upon watching something […]
The Romanoffs: “The Violet Hour”, “The Royal We”
As the opening of The Romanoffs, “The Violet Hour” and “The Royal We” offer hints of greatness, but suffer from their length.
LA Film Festival: Making Montgomery Clift
Legacy is a tricky thing. As a species, we have a tendency towards propping up certain narratives and ideas as definitive, but the totality of life defies such narrow constrictions. It’s nice to think that […]
The Funhouse
Tobe Hooper is obviously best known for directing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Which is definitely one of the greats in the horror genre. Only problem is that his output from there drops significantly. Eaten Alive was his […]
Atlanta: Season One
This is a show that had been on my radar ever since it first aired back in 2016. It has received universal acclaim among critics and social circles alike. Donald Glover in particular has been […]
Better Call Saul – Season 4, Episode 9: “Wiedersehen”
Author’s note: This article CONTAINS SPOILERS for the episode of discussion and all episodes of the series that have preceded it. Episode 9 of the fourth season of Better Call Saul sees all the main […]
White Material
Claire Denis, along with being one of the best filmmakers working today, is also one of the most unique. Her work, spanning decades, is consistently evolving each time she makes a film; each movie is […]
Lodge 49, Episode Nine: “Apogee”
Celebration is at hand as Dud and Ernie hope for the best.
Angst
I watched this film last year for my October marathon and was blown away. If it wasn’t for Erwin Leder, who was the engine guy in Das Boot the year or two before this, I […]
Saturday Night Live – Season 44, Episode 1: Adam Driver/Kanye West
Saturday Night Live is back for yet another season, and with it comes a lot of unevenness and uncertainty. Saturday night’s premier episode provided Kanye West with a platform for sharing his music and also […]
Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven arrived at a time when audiences were slowly saying goodbye to classic and revisionist Westerns in favor of high-octane blockbusters driven by special effects. This makes it a perfect candidate to nail […]
The Sisters Brothers
When I think about westerns, I think about iconography: lone gunman, vistas, a lot of strong silent types. What I don’t think of are men dreaming of opening stores, Utopian ideals, and fraternal bonds of […]
Christine
There are few sounds as important to the American iconography as the engine rumble of a powerful car. It’s the aural equivalent of an open stretch of road anywhere but here; a powerful, mechanized decedent […]
Hold the Dark
After two intimately-scaled, white-knuckled Americana thrillers (Blue Ruin and Green Room), director Jeremy Saulnier decides to stretch his abilities as a storyteller by unwinding his tightly threaded grotesqueries, opting instead for a sprawling and, comparatively, […]
Beau Travail
‘sert la bonne cause et meurt’ (serve the good cause and die) Despite being adapted from a 19th century novella, Beau Travail is an incredibly cinematic work that explores questions of memory, identity, and sexuality, […]
Little Italy
Everything you need to know about Little Italy is in the poster. It went viral this year, perfectly attuned to the internet’s beige fixation on the ordinary. It shows an uncomfortable Hayden Christensen, flummoxed by […]
Bojack Horseman: Season 5
Light spoilers for the entire series, followed by a spoiler section with a little more detail on some particulars. Netflix is now putting out an absurd amount of content at an unfathomable rate. Every single […]
A Star Is Born
*This review contains minor spoilers only.* In the first act of Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut there’s an electricity in the air, a tangible atmosphere with jolts of energy. Because when navigating crowds and guitars, A […]
Sorry For Your Loss
The Facebook Watch series provides excellent performances in Elizabeth Olsen and Kelly Marie Tran.
Good Time
It’s amazing how a city can come alive at night, pulsing with an electric vitality much like that of the human heart. Lights flicker in the sky and alongside busy streets like millions of curious, […]
LA Film Festival: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Earlier this week, my colleague Kevin Lever reviewed Netflix’s spooky new series The Haunting of Hill House, based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name. I suppose with October just around the corner, it’s […]
The Wild Bunch
“It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.” One of the greatest slices of western Americana you’re ever bound to find, The Wild Bunch is, in many ways, a series of goodbyes. A goodbye […]
Rango
In early 2011, I started paying attention to trailers for this bizarre animated feature, a quirky western with a cast of funny animal characters and Johnny Depp as a chameleon that looks as if the […]
The Magnificent Seven Ride!
Well, this series is now done. I can’t say I’m completely disappointed in it, but as a whole it’s very mixed. Odd entries are good and even entries are not. Now you know where I’m […]
LA Film Festival: Microhabitat
If you were to catalogue my favorite films of all time, you’d quickly discover a certain strain of emotion that characterizes a large portion of them: melancholy. Inside Llewyn Davis, Alice in the Cities, The […]
The Man in the High Castle: Season Three
The Man in the High Castle returns with its best season yet.
Big Mouth: Season Two
Big Mouth returns with more hardships and complicated feelings. It’s still a hell of a show.
Better Call Saul – Episodes 7 & 8, “Something Stupid” & “Coushatta”
Author’s note: This article CONTAINS SPOILERS for the episodes of discussion and all episodes of the series that have preceded them. During my vacation-induced absence of last week’s review, a lot has changed in the […]
The Haunting of Hill House: Season One
Netflix and Mike Flanagan bring us a fantastic new version of the classic tale.
Godard Mon Amour
Godard Mon Amour’s already been reviewed by its subject. As Jean-Luc Godard famously noted, it’s a “stupid, stupid idea,” a quote which has been bandied about on all of the film’s marketing. Cutting and full […]
Lodge 49, Episode Eight: “Something From Nothing”
In the best episode of the season, Dud and Ernie go on a journey with their new friend.
Letter From Masanjia
In the summer of 1999, everything changed for China’s seventy million or so Falun Gong practitioners. Introduced in 1992, the spiritual movement had grown rapidly by emphasizing common sense ideals: truthfulness, compassion, and morality. However, […]
Maniac
A masterful limited series with gorgeous direction and impeccable performances from Jonah Hill and Emma Stone.
LA Film Festival 2018: Tea With the Dames
Judi Dench. Maggie Smith. Joan Plowright. Eileen Atkins. Together they are a combined 338 years old, and having started their careers in the 1950s, each possesses more acting experience than just about anybody else on […]
The House with a Clock in Its Walls
America’s sweetheart Eli Roth, usually occupied with horror films about torture and cannibalism, has made a seasonal horror romp for the family. The story is based on the John Bellairs series of young adult novels […]
Happy Death Day
Happy Death Day chronicles a scenario in which a selfish and badly behaved student is forced to relive her birthday over and over again à la Before I Fall. The difference is this is horror, […]
Nancy
While watching director Christina Choe’s lonely and isolating first act of Nancy, one might start to wonder when the aspects of the film’s mystery might come in. For the first half hour we mostly see […]
Rush
Horsepower Month is all about men on horses or in fast cars, and there are none faster on the tracks than the 900 horsepower beasts in Formula One racing (aside from some jet-powered monstrosities). But […]
James Bond Retrospective: You Only Live Twice (1967)
I had just gotten the briefing from my editor. He had grown tired of the typical Bond introductions and suggested I visit Tokyo and drink Sake in proper preparation for this expert analysis on Sean […]
Guns of the Magnificent Seven
Part two was a pretty bad movie and I kind of anticipated the trend to continue, with each entry getting worse and worse. However, I can pleasantly say that this movie definitely gunned down my […]
Bullitt
This was my first full dive into Director Peter Yates’ late 60’s action movie Bullitt. Having seen the famous car chase a number of times, I felt Horsepower Month was the right time to finally get […]
Johnny Guitar
I was first introduced to Johnny Guitar the way I assume a lot of people my age were: patrolling the Mojave Wasteland in Obsidian Entertainment’s modern roleplaying classic, Fallout: New Vegas. It’s one of my […]
