Blake Howard 2/24/17 Blake Howard 2/24/17

Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho - 2016) Movie Review [Sydney Film Festival]

Aquarius is a shrine to an incredible woman with a confounding central performance from Sonia Braga. Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho crafts a consuming tale about principles and passion.

Blake Howard 1/5/17 Blake Howard 1/5/17

Housewives Desperate for Horror: The Girl on the Train (2016) Review

From the moment we begin with Emily Blunt’s voice over in The Girl on the Train there’s something terribly unsettling.

Blake Howard 12/21/16 Blake Howard 12/21/16

Grave Robbery - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards - 2016) Review

For a sublime third act, Rogue One is a resounding success. For the perversity of slavish desire for performers to be as interchangeable as video game characters, this Star Wars dude does not abide.

Blake Howard 12/21/16 Blake Howard 12/21/16

Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker - 2016) Review

Director Nate Parker and Birth of a Nation rumbles with the ache of inevitable failure. Where films like Django Unchained allow you the blaxploitation fantasies of exacting vengeance on the worst of the worst; Birth of a Nation wants to reinforce while the historically displaced and disenfranchised have hate tattooed on their very bones. Black voices telling black stories is essential.

Blake Howard 12/14/16 Blake Howard 12/14/16

Jackie (Pablo Larraín - 2016) Movie Review

Jackie Kennedy, the woman behind one of the greatest and most influential Presidents in the history of the United States, gets an intimate impressionist portrait. Forging the myths of “Camelot,” interrogating the morality of being a widow in the most drastic and heavily scrutinised circumstance; director Pablo Larraín and hypnotic star Natalie Portman finds ways to render gut punching alternate perspectives to well trodden history.

Blake Howard 12/14/16 Blake Howard 12/14/16

I Like to Watch: Nerve and Money Monster

Nerve is a movie that’s right on time. Nerve’s an online game of truth or dare; Periscope with teeth.

Blake Howard 12/14/16 Blake Howard 12/14/16

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve - 2016) Movie Review

Language and the ability to “articulate” our existence is one of the defining characteristics of the human species. Arrival is about the awakening and ensuing trauma discovering that we’re not alone in the universe.

Blake Howard 11/16/16 Blake Howard 11/16/16

Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford - 2016): The Wretched

Nocturnal Animals is a dark tragedy. Ford's motivation for the film is writ large in the opening credits. Obese, grotesque, American women gyrate in slow motion like a 'Fourth of July' themed, trailer park strip show. Like war photography, Ford wants to find the beauty in darkness.

Blake Howard 11/16/16 Blake Howard 11/16/16

Café Society (Woody Allen - 2016) Review: Play it again Woody

Cafe Society feels like you're ready to dismiss it and then you realise that you're engrossed to the point you can't look away.

Blake Howard 11/10/16 Blake Howard 11/10/16

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) Movie Review: "What's in the Box?

Thanks to enthusiastically sincere performances, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates has a perverse charm.

Blake Howard 11/2/16 Blake Howard 11/2/16

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) Movie Review: And you thought M:I 2 was bad!?

The quality drop between Jack Reacher and Never Go Back might make it a worse sequel than Mission: Impossible II.

Blake Howard 11/2/16 Blake Howard 11/2/16

Arrival (2016) Movie Review: Not Alone In The Universe

Arrival sets itself up with an elevator pitch: what if, on the day you felt most isolated, you discover we are not alone in the universe?

Blake Howard 11/2/16 Blake Howard 11/2/16

Marvel's Doctor Strange (2016) Movie Review: The C+ Ceiling

Marvel is stuttering along like a student that can't bust the C+ ceiling.

Blake Howard 11/2/16 Blake Howard 11/2/16

The Shallows (2016) Movie Review: "Lively Jaws"

The Shallows (apart from an ending that nearly makes the entire film shit the bed) is a hair-raising, beautifully executed and performed thriller that likes to remind the audience why going in the water's cool, but if you swim near a Shark's food, "you done f*cked up."

Blake Howard 10/13/16 Blake Howard 10/13/16

Netflix's Mascots Review

Guest achieves dad-joke status with Mascots; the same faces, the same gags, the same set ups, the same polite laugher; dad, enough.

Blake Howard 10/5/16 Blake Howard 10/5/16

Hell or High Water (2016) Movie Review: No Country For Bad Accents

Hell or High Water has had some pretty poor comparisons to No Country for Old Men in the buzz and hype for the film. That's not to deny that HOHW is a quality viewing, but rather that the world at large is not generating forces like Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh to be unleashed upon the characters. Instead writer Taylor Sheridan is tackling American financial corruption head on.