script> script>

Warren Cantrell

When it is at its best, the film finds the perfect symbiotic balance between Kerouac’s prose and the solemn beauty of the open road, where the adventures of a young dreamer plant the seeds of not only one man’s future, but an entire generation of literary hopefuls.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A celebration of the most ludicrous, impractical, destructive, ineffective military organizations in movie history. While some of the films featured were pretty decent, and others were decidedly not, they all had one thing in common: they featured an armed collective so laughably inept that they stood out amongst even the most impractical government organizations.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Some honorable mentions that didn’t quite clear the quality bar included Holes, The Indian in the Cupboard, Watership Down, Stuart Little, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little Red Riding Hood, Bridge to Terabithia, Winnie the Pooh (2011), Horton Hears a Who, Coraline, Curious George (2006), How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Charlotte’s Web, and Hook (Peter Pan deserves better).

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The five of us sipped a delicious rye-bourbon blend called Son of Bourye, one that’s made in-house by High West, and discussed some of the practical realities of making The Moo Man, and what we all considered the film’s message to be.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The following is a ranking of the “best” films Warren Cantrell saw while attending the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, a ranking that was labored over to practically no end.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

While This Is Martin Bonner is a very thoughtful, well-acted, interesting character study, at a paltry 83 minutes, it could have survived another 15 or so to give some closure to the stories of Martin and Travis, who both seemed on the verge of a breakthrough in their lives.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

At the Sundance Film Festival, first-time director Meul O. presents a movie that straight-up indicts the U.S. government for a largely forgotten act of genocide with his movie Jiseul, a drama about the 1948 South Korean uprising on the island of Jeju, a nightmarish event that claimed thousands of lives.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

As a piece of cinema, Bastian Günther’s film should be commended for this kind of work, for Houston never just tosses a character component on the table for its audience to absorb, but instead dresses its scenes with subtle visual cues that tell a larger story.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A half-assed mélange of incomplete characters, throw-away visual cues, and incompetent story-telling, it’s almost as if director Sebastian Silva made Magic Magic so that he could sit in the back of the theater, and watch his audience squirm.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A fascinating inside look into the making of what some have called the Gone With the Wind of porno flicks, Lovelace is most successful when allowing its characters room to explore their emotional topography.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

‘The Moo Man’ is a celebration of those brave souls out there, in any job, who engage in a difficult profession because they enjoy it and believe in it, and not simply because it pays the bills.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

What’s the purpose of cinema if not to engage its audience on a level (or levels) that both entertains, but also broadens their understanding of a particular theme or notion? A Teacher fails in both of these endeavors, for it is not only a shitty time (this movie is a slog), but it doesn’t bring its audience to a new place by the time it fades to black.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

As a cinematic adaptation of a literary piece, Big Sur is near-flawless, for it makes extensive use of Kerouac’s writing from the book, and uses its powerful cadence and pacing to draw the audience into the increasingly fragmented mind of the legendary Beatnik.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Easily the frontrunner for the best picture going at Sundance right now, Breathe In is a film about adulthood, marriage, compromise, and how love, true, pure love, isn’t always a good thing.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Concussion is a film about a New York wife and mother who suffers a little head trauma, an injury that leads her to a stunning realization: she doesn’t much care for her life, and wants to try something new. Yet this is hardly an American Beauty reboot.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }