

Movie Review: Lion
By Justin Cudahy, Contributor [See-Saw; 2016] Rating: 7.5/10 Based on a true story, Lion chronicles the life of Saroo Brierly, who was separated from his family at the age of 5 after accidentally falling asleep on a passenger train that departed during mid-sleep in his hometown of Khandwa, India. Twenty years later, while living in Australia with his adoptive family, Saroo begins to a search to find his origins using only Google Earth, and what he can remember. What follows i


Movie Review: Hidden Figures
By Maria Lubanovic, Contributor [Levantine; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 There hasn’t been a better time for a movie that promotes progress in science and equality; Hidden Figures is based on the true story of three African-American women, Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), who worked at NASA during the space race with Russia. Their work as a calculator, a computer programmer, and an engineer shaped NASA as wel


Movie Review: A Man Called Ove
By Maria Lubanovic, Contributor [Tre Vänner Produktion AB; 2016] Rating: 8/10 Based on the bestselling book by the same name, A Man Called Ove follows the life of 59-year-old retiree Ove, who has lost both his job, his love, and his will to live. He spends his days surveying the block, forcing people to follow the rules, visiting his wife’s grave and trying to push everyone away so that he can finally join his wife. Read that as you will. Suddenly, when new neighbors move in,


Movie Review: Moonlight
By Jonathan Fuchs, Music Director [A24; 2016] Rating: 9.5/10 Every year, a movie comes along that people remember for years and years to come as a perfect portrait of humanity. They’re movies so real and emotional, they help the audience walk around in someone else’s shoes; learning about what it means to be alive. In 2016, we get that raw portrait of humanity with Moonlight. Moonlight follows Chiron, a young black man growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Miami. The f


Movie Review - Christine
By Justin Cudahy, Contributor [The Orchard; 2016] Rating: 9/10 Christine is an American-British biographical film that gives viewers a look at the final weeks of news reporter Christine Chubbuck’s life, who orchestrated a live suicide in front of thousands watching at home in 1974. Phenomenal acting by both Rebecca Hall and Michael C. Hall coupled with Antonio Campos’s great directing is enough to give this movie the attention it deserves. People won’t be seeing this movie to


Movie Review: Certain Women
By Tanner Bidish, Contributor [Stage 6; 2016] Rating: 6/10 Kelly Reichardt takes the creative helm as director, screenwriter and editor with her latest work, Certain Women. Set in small town Montana, the film features three narratives that look into the lives of three different working class women. The vignette style of Certain Women comes from being adapted from Maile Meloy’s collection of short stories, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it. Unconventional narrative format me


Movie Review: Doctor Strange
By Kieffer Wilson, Contributor [Marvel; 2016] Rating: 7/10 Each Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) character has a consistent theme that shapes their films. Iron Man is about the internal struggles of Tony Stark, Captain America is about the relationship between Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers and The Avengers is about the clashing of morals and personality. Doctor Strange is different from these films, because it doesn’t care so much for the struggles of its characters. Instead,


Movie Review: Denial
By Justin Cudahy, Contributor [Bleecker Street; 2016] Rating: 6.5/10 In 1993, American author and historian Deborah Lipstadt released her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which provided the history of the Holocaust as well as an analysis of the Holocaust denial movement. It was in this book that Lipstadt called out English author and denier David Irving, accusing of him of fabricating history as a means of pushing his “racist” agenda. Thre


Movie Review: American Honey
By Jonathan Fuchs, Music Director [A24; 2016] Rating: 8.5/10 The Lady Antebellum song “American Honey” is about a girl with so much ambition for her future, she runs away from her small town life too soon, causing her to regret running away so fast and miss the times of her care-free youth. That is kind of the story of the film of the same name, an almost three-hour long epic that surprised audiences worldwide and swept away the Cannes Film Festival, winning the main Jury Pri


Movie Review: Hell or High Water
By Justin Cudahy, Contributor [Sidney Kimmel Entertainment; 2016] Rating: 8/10 Hell or High Water comes from the popular idiom, meaning to do whatever it takes, no matter the circumstances. This fits the movie perfectly, which follows Toby and Tanner Howard, a pair of brothers who aim to rob a chain of banks across West Texas in an effort to raise enough money to prevent their recently deceased mother’s farm house from undergoing foreclosure. On the other side, two rangers ar