JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (dir. by Shaka King, 126 minutes, USA, 2021) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s rare that you see a first time filmmaker just race out of the gate with such a grand and assured debut, which feels like something a more seasoned filmmaker could work their entire career and never achieve. But Shaka King has accomplished just that with his second feature Judas and the Black Messiah. The ambitious biopic which just premiered at Sundance is based on newly declassified documents similar to MLK/FBI and Seberg, and if you’re thinking there’s a pattern starting […]
CINEMA: The Walls Have Ears
MLK/FBI (directed by Sam Pollard, 104 minutes, USA, 2021) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC In 2019 the FBI released a treasure trove of documents related to the Bureau’s notorious surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. that began in the wake of the March On Washington in 1963 and persisted until the Civil Rights icon’s assassination in 1968. Director Sam Pollard has sourced these documents for his latest documentary MLK/FBI which doesn’t waste its time with the more salacious accusations, but instead delivers some amazing context and insight into the how and the why this was allowed to go on […]
CINEMA: Dead Man Talking
THE DISSIDENT (directed by Bryan Fogel, 119 minutes, USA, 2021) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC There’s been no shortage of great political docs this awards season, and the most intriguing offerings seem to be the ones surprisingly absent from the bigger streaming services. Alongside Assassins, Ryan White’s excellent deep dive into the assissination of Kim Jong-nam, is The Dissident, the latest film by Bryan Fogel (Icarus). Like the Assassins, The Dissident digs into another polictically motivaved murder, that went unpunished: the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a government-sponsored Saudi death squad. Where The Dissident […]
CINEMA: A Q&A With Wonder Woman 1984’s Star Gal Gadot And Director Patty Jenkins
BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Wonder Woman has always been a feminist icon, but director Patty Jenkins resurrected the fearless and Amazon just when the world needed her most. The first film hit in 2017 and establishing this new take on the character while the seeds of Trumpism were just starting to take root in America. Now three years later, Jenkins has brought Diana back and transported her to the go-go 1980s where she does battle with Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), an Art of the Deal pyramid scheming business tycoon, complete with a blonde cowlick. Maxwell Lord’s superpower is […]
CINEMA: Waiting For Gadot
WONDER WOMAN 1984 (directed by Patty Jenkins, 151 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC This has been a weird year for superhero films. It’s been over a year since the last Marvel tentpole and in their absence DC has really stepped up their game up, proving they’re more than simply dark and gritty superheroes pining over mothers named Martha and misogynistic clowns. First came Birds of Prey , a colorful story of girl power that gave Harley Quinn the spotlight she so desperately deserved. That was followed up with The Harley Quinn animated series, which was easily one […]
CINEMA: Citizen Mank
MANK (Directed by David Fincher, 131 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Based on the essay by film critic Pauline Kael, David Fincher’s Mank digs into the controversy behind just who wrote one of the greatest films ever made: Citizen Kane. While Orson Welles famously directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, Welles split the screenplay credit with one Herman J. Mankiewicz, AKA “Mank,” a crumbling genius with one foot in the grave and one on the bottle. While both men walked away with a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1942, it’s long been debated just how much […]
CINEMA: I Spit On Your Gravy
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (Directed by Emerald Lilly Fennell, 113 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Director Emerald Lilly Fennell (Killing Eve) merges the arthouse with the grindhouse with this shotgun-wedding of the rape/revenge sub-genre to the #MeToo movement. Promising Young Woman begins by introducing us to Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a beautiful young curmudgeonly barista by day, and by night an avenging angel who lies in wait in bars and clubs pretending to be over-served and incapicated. This trap is meant to ensnare the “nice guys” who attempt to take advantage of her only to have the tables […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re Kinda Sorta On Hiatus
EDITOR’S NOTE: Regular visitors to this web site might have noticed a distinct scarcity of updates lo these last few months. That’s because I’ve been hard at work on a six-hour docu-series I’ve sold to television that’s slated to air in the spring. Not at liberty to get into the details at the moment, but there will be a big reveal in a few months. In the mean time we will be publishing at a greatly reduced pace, but look for the occasional movie review by film critic Dan Tabor or yet another Dad-Rock rant by folk music editor […]
CINEMA: Hellraiser
I AM GRETA (directed by Nathan Grossman, 97 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC I Am Greta isn’t looking to change any minds about the teenage climate activist, or further educate anyone on the issue of climate change. Instead this Hulu Original documentary looks to do one thing, and it does that extremely well – humanize its subject through intimate portraiture. Granted unrestricted access to his subject, director Nathan Grossman takes his camera behind the scenes of the fire-breathing take-no-shit public personae and her #FridaysForFuture movement to reveal the humble origins of Greta’s crusade, her family life and […]
CINEMA: Chelsea Girl
ON THE ROCKS (directed by Sophia Coppola, 96 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Sofia Coppola’s followup to 2017’s The Beguiled has the director once again returning to the themes of isolation and alienation that echo throughout her filmography, but this time exploring they hit a bit closer to home. Like 2010’s Somewhere, On The Rocks, which is both written and directed by Coppola feels very autobiographical as it explores the disorienting and dispiriting sense of psychic dislocation that can often creep into both marriage and motherhood. The film focuses on Laura (Rashida Jones), a successful author suffering […]
CINEMA: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again
TENET (Directed by Christopher Nolan, 150 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC After months of delays,Tenet, the latest epic from blockbuster auteur Christopher Nolan finally hits theaters this week.The film that many hoped would kickstart theaters after the pandemic has been up until this point shrouded in secrecy. I was given the chance to review it for Phawker, but only if I viewed it in a theater, of course. Nolan is all about the theatrical experience and like the rest of his catalog, this film benefits from being projected as loud and big as humanly possible. While I […]
CINEMA: The Dudes Still Abide
BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC (directed by Dean Parisot, 91 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Shrouded in rumor, and two decades of production delays, many fans feared Bill & Ted Face The Music was going to be a lot like the epic disaster that was Guns and Roses’ Chinese Democracy, when it finally hit screens. With word trickling out every once in a while, praising the concept or the script, touting it as a worthy successor to the series, which for the third film in a franchise is basically unheard of; the longer we waited the […]
CINEMA: The Stranger
TINY TIM: KING FOR A DAY (dir. by Johan von Sydow, 78 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Growing up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, situated just a stone’s throw from the Mason Dixon line, we didn’t get a lot of celebrities coming through our neck of the woods. In fact, in the ten plus years I lived there, the closest we got was an extra from 12 Monkeys — and Tiny Tim, who came through one year with the traveling circus. I was probably eight or nine at the time and I remember two things […]