The Foxy Film Fan

Director Rupert Goold is perhaps most notable for his phenomenal Macbeth  film, which is singlehandedly responsible for sparking my interest in the play (and Patrick Stewart played no small role in swaying my heart, of course). Unfortunately his 2019 biopic, Judy,  is bland and tasteless. As one critic states, Judy  shows the lows, but it carefully avoids navigating the highs of Judy Garland's life. As many know, Judy Garland's life was one full of abuse, addiction, and terrible trauma. She acted and sang under prying eyes for most of her life, was sexually abused by disgusting men in the film industry who were too big to worry about consequences for their actions, and struggled to have the relationship with her children she yearned for. Goold's film, Judy, observes these tragedies within her life through a cold and callous lens. We watch her perform, indulge in her addiction, and get some incredibly painful flashbacks to some of her childhood abuse. There's never ...

          2019 was an interesting and contradictory year for film. On one hand we had more of the Hollywood Disney/Marvel sameness, and on the other hand we had some unique new releases by some of my favorite directors of all time. This list took a great deal of contemplation, because 2019 had some wonderful releases, and I hope 2020s list is even more challenging. Unfortunately, 2019 had a lot of great movies I didn't get around to watching in time for writing this list ( Uncut Gems and Knives Out , to be specific), but you can expect full reviews for both of those movies in the future.           Also, Cats  gets a shoutout for making me physically ill with its grotesque imagery. Congratulations on feeling three hours longer than you really are.  10. The Lighthouse horror, directed by Robert Eggers           Robert Eggers is singlehandedly responsible for absolutely horrifying me with his ...

Ready Or Not  is your traditional wedding story. A woman marries a rich man, and she has to survive until daylight while her new in-laws hunt her down with guns and crossbows. You know, it's just like every other wedding you've been to. There's a lot to say about this movie and it's commentary made on the wealthy privileged elites of society, and there's also a lot to say about Samara Weaving's performance as the bride who just can't seem to catch a break. Class warfare is the most blatant theme throughout Ready Or Not , and it's sort of a play on those stories of the wealthy hunting humans for fun. The family's dysfunction leads to her new husband, Alex, having complicated feelings about the role he's forced to play. Like the wealthy who contemplate whether the role they play in society is truly beneficial or actually actively harms the poor, he sways back and forth from longing to protect his wife and feeling certain that he has a duty to...

Like many others, I was introduced to Taika Waititi through his satirical vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows  (written and directed alongside costar Jemaine Clement). It was funny enough for me to seek out and watch his heartfelt Hunt for the Wilderpeople starring Sam Neill. I even enjoyed and rewatched Thor: Ragnarok . So, I like Waititi's work, I like his style which emulates Wes Anderson but aspires to much more than settling for the wit and charm of Anderson's work. Waititi's Jojo Rabbit  doesn't just aim to tell a story, it aims to communicate the way a horrific ideology can spread like a wildfire through children. In some instances Jojo Rabbit  gives you emotional whiplash. One moment you're accompanying our clever child protagonist on his adventures around Berlin, and the next you're faced with the horrors of war as a civilian in Nazi Germany. However, this whiplash is crucial to truly understanding how the joy of the privileged in Berlin could...

Directed by Robert Eggers of The VVitch fame, The Lighthouse  stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as a pair of lighthouse keepers whose isolation drives them to madness. Both actors put forth incredible performances, and Robert Pattinson continues to show his phenomenal skills as an actor who is still unfairly connected to a movie series he starred in a decade ago. Pattinson takes on the role of a silent man who wants to just do his job and leave, whereas Dafoe is the old eccentric who switches from antagonizing his young assistant one moment to demanding he speak up and swap a few stories (maybe even enjoy a few drinks). Visually, the film is hypnotic. The black and white shots of ocean waves crashing against the shore and storms rolling through in the distance left me in absolute awe. Its accompanying score is comprised of slow droning horns and strings which gradually get louder and fade into long gaps of silence, not unlike the bellows of the lighthouse itself. The s...

Stephen King movie adaptations and I have had a tumultuous relationship at best. I like  many of them -  Misery  gave Kathy Bates the opportunity to demonstrate her incredible acting skills (but muddled the creeping terror of the book by introducing a friendly bumbling cop for us to keep up with), Thinner  was terrible, the 2019  Pet Sematary  remake was painful to sit through, It Chapter Two  tricked the audience into watching the same sequence of events over and over again, nobody watched (or liked) The Dark Tower , and Netflix's In the Tall Grass tried its best. Of course there are the classics like Stand By Me , The Green Mile , Shawshank Redemption , and 1408  (I'm kidding, I just have a soft spot for that one in particular). Then there's The Shining . I want to acknowledge something briefly, before I delve into praising this work of art. Stanley Kubrick abused Shelley Duvall horrifically to force her into a deteriorating mental state...

Parasite  is the newest film from director Bong Joon-Ho, who is most well known for his films Snowpiercer and Okja . The former is class struggle shrunk down to play out on a massive train with incredible poverty and extreme wealth, and the latter focuses on the story of a girl traveling from her home in the mountains of South Korea to America in order to track down her animal friend which was taken from her by a corrupt corporation. Class is a big deal in Bong Joon-Ho's work, and he especially focuses on the way those in positions of wealth and power live completely oblivious to the plight of those struggling to make ends meet. Snowpiercer was an allegory for class warfare, but Parasite  is an uncomfortable up-close depiction of the real thing. Bong Joon-Ho's newest film is a picture of the desperation of poverty, and the impossible task put upon the lower class to simply climb the ladder (or spiral staircase) themselves. Plans in the Kim family fail so often they know ...

Bathed in golden hues, The King  tells the story of King Henry V with heavy inspiration from the plays of William Shakespeare. Timothée Chalamet stars as the titular king, and it's a difficult role to take on. Henry undergoes three key internal transformations throughout the course of the nearly three hour film, but Chalamet handles each subtle shift in personality with the dignity the role deserves.  There are brief instances where the film fumbles, particularly in the strangely sanitized way it depicts the future king's reckless lifestyle prior to his position in power. The film shows him hungover, and we see him with a fully clothed woman beside him in his bed on a couple of occasions, but it fails to properly depict him as the failure everyone in the film sees him as. After his newfound role as king there are some slower scenes to slog through, but once France (and Robert Pattinson's performance as The Dauphin of France) make an appearance the film succeeds in f...