THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (directed by J.J. Abrams, 141 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC At the end of The Last Jedi, we witnessed Luke Skywalker sacrifice his life so the remnants of the Resistance could escape aboard the Millennium Falcon. This was after Kylo Ren promoted himself to supreme leader by killing the mysterious Snoke, and offering Rey a place at his side ruling the galaxy. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi made some bold choices compared to JJ Abrams’ fan service-y The Force Awakens. This created a rift between those fans that wanted a new drug and […]
CINEMA: Hot Rocks
UNCUT GEMS (directed by Ben & Joseph Safdie, 135 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC There were several points while watching Uncut Gems that my Apple Watch began to go off letting me know that my heart rate was getting out of control, and that I needed to take a moment to “breath.” Watching the film in a darkened theater, I felt very much like its protagonist – trapped, anxious and fearing for my own sanity. It was during the third haptic Apple Watch alarm that I knew I was witnessing one of the best films this year. […]
CINEMA: Murder On The Bourgeois Express
KNIVES OUT (directed by Rian Johnson, 130 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR The whodunnit murder mystery is a genre that’s kind of faded into obscurity over the years. It’s probably because audiences are a lot savvier when it comes this genre’s patented plot twist denouement reveal, making this one of the more difficult genres to pull off effectively in the age of social media. Be that as it may, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is a brilliant love letter to the drawing room sleuthing of the likes of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, and easily one of the best films […]
CINEMA: The Kid And The Wail
MARRIAGE STORY (directed by Noah Baumbach, 136 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, begins at the tail end of Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole’s (Scarlett Johansson) union with the pair unsuccessfully attempting divorce mediation. Nicole who once had a successful film career in LA, moved to New York where she fell in love with Charlie. Soon married, the pair worked together in the New York theater scene with Charlie writing/directing and Nicole as his wife, muse and lead, not to mention the mother of their son. A profile in Brooklyn […]
CINEMA: Q&A W/ Knives Out Director Rian Johnson
BY DAN TABOR Easily one of the most surreal moments I had this year was getting to chat with director Rian Johnson (The Last Jedi, Looper, Breaking Bad) the morning after seeing his latest film, Knives Out, at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Knives Out is a hilariously brilliant whodunit in the spirit of Agatha Christie, that has Johnson tackling the story of an eccentric family under investigation, after the “suicide” of their extremely wealthy, murder mystery-writing patriarch. Johnson immediately made an impression with both filmgoers and critics with his first feature Brick and has since directed both films (Looper) […]
CINEMA: Punk Rock Horror Picture Show
Punk rock legend, Glenn Danzig, who is currently in the midst of his reunion tour with The Misfits is making a solo stop at our very own Philadelphia Film Center, Friday, December the 13th, the night before The Misfits play the Wells Fargo Center. Danzig will be presenting an exclusive, one-night-only screening of his directorial debut, Verotika, a feature-length horror anthology of tales culled from his comic book series. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Danzig and producer James Cullen Bressack. Verotika premiered at this year’s Cinepocalypse Film Fest and reportedly achieved instant infamy, drawing comparisons […]
REVIEW: Mean Girls @ The Academy Of Music
Mean Girls, the 2004 smash teen romcom written by Upper Darby’s Tina Fey and starring pre-demise Lindsey Lohan, is a cautionary tale of a teen’s need for validation in order to compete in the perpetual popularity contest that is high school. It’s the story of Cady Heron, who just transferred to North Shore High after growing up in Kenya. Because she was homeschooled for the first 16 years of her life, Cady lacks the social skills it takes to fit in at her new school. Mercifully, two high school outcasts, Janice and Damien, befriend her. Janice and Damien’s sworn enemies […]
EXCERPT: Postcard From The Edge
VULTURE: [Carrie] caused deep worry that was somehow hidden by the movie crews’ obsession with John’s addiction rather than her own. Carrie—younger than the others—was intensely fragile. She was generous, brilliant, witty, charismatic, caring—and deeply vulnerable: friends could see that. When they all got to the Belushis’ Vineyard house, “my brother was most concerned about her. He had to carry her limp body from room to room. I guess she was conscious enough that he didn’t call an ambulance, but he had a strong sense that she was really out of it.” It was during that spate of days on the […]
CINEMA: Bad Fellas
THE IRISHMAN (directed by Martin Scorsese, 209 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Based on the mob hitman memoir I Hear You Paint Houses, The Irishman is the “true” story of Irish Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a blue-collar World War II veteran who made a life for himself in the Italian mafia hitman “painting houses” with the blood of his wiseguy victims. At the start of The Irishman, we meet Frank living out his final days in a nursing home as he reflects back on how he rose to the right-hand of not only Russell Bufalino […]
CINEMA: Springtime For Hitler
JOJO RABBIT (directed by Taika Waititi, 108 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR Jojo Rabbit is the answer to the unasked question: what if Wes Anderson decided to make a whimsical, black comedic satire about Nazis? Based on Christine Leunens’s book Caging Skies and set at the tail end of World War II, Jojo Rabbit is the story of 10 year-old Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), who lives in Germany with his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) and his imaginary best friend, a cartoonish version of Adolph Hitler played by the film’s director Taika Waititi (Thor Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople). […]
CINEMA: Moby Dicks
THE LIGHTHOUSE (directed by Robert Eggers, 109 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Robert Eggers The Witch was nothing short of a masterpiece, a complex cinematic meditation on feminism and coming of age using witchcraft as a metaphorical framework that is unveiled in a slow burn narrative. So I’ve been eagerly anticipating Robert Eggers’ follow-up and when it was finally unveiled that it would be starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, I was all-in. While some will never forgive Pattinson for his wooden acting in the Twilight movies, let the record show he’s used the celebrity that […]
CINEMA: Zombies All The Way Down
ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (dir. by Ruben Fleisher, 99 minutes, 2019, USA) BY DAN TABOR It’s been over a decade since the release of Zombieland, the charmingly dysfunctional family comedy that just so happens to take place during the zombie apocalypse. The Ruben Fleischer directed film was the front runner of our current zombie resurgence, soon followed by the juggernaut that is The Walking Dead, which over nine years has run its course both as a show and as a fixture in the pop-culture landscape. Thanks to TWD I think every variation of the formula has been attempted in every […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
Artwork by SCOTT LAUMANN FRESH AIR: The recent biopic Rocketman painted a Hollywood version of Elton John’s life, but a new memoir, Me, comes straight from the artist himself. In it, he describes how, as a young man, he was determined to enter the music business, in spite of some misgivings about rock ‘n’ roll in his household. As he tells Fresh Air, “My dad, of course, hated it.” And yet, that disapproval only fueled his will to succeed. Me recounts many more stories from the pop superstar’s personal life, including how proposing to a woman helped him realize he […]