Oh So Geeky

Based on the novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, 15 year old Margo Crane (Kenadi DelaCerna) lives on the Stark River bank with her father Bernard (Tatanka Means). After she endures a family scandal that leaves her ostracized from the community and other relatives, she goes in search of her mother who left a year earlier. As she winds down the river, she encounters strangers who help her heal and start over. As Once Upon A River is told from Crane’s perspective, the film primarily belongs to Kenadi DelaCerna. She occupies almost every frame from beginning to end, which is a tall order for an actress making her screen debut. Crane is a quiet and thoughtful heroine who internalizes her experiences, leading most of DelaCerna’s performance to rest in subtle expressions, and to do so without losing your attention of what she is thinking and feeling. DelaCerna possesses a mature presence that brings Crane to life. A solid round of supporting actors also strengthens DelaCerna’s presence on-screen f...

Inspired by true stories Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) helps lead Winston Churchill’s new secret army of spies known as the Special Operations Executive. Two of her newest recruits – Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) become the first “lady spies” of a resistance network in German-occupied France as Hitler poises to cross the English channel.  History has a way of repeating itself in Hollywood. When the same old stories are told, we’re stuck believing that the same people save or revolutionize the world over and over again. As female filmmakers look more between the lines of the past and its forgotten trailblazers, we begin to see just how much entertainment has scratched the surface. In a recent bout of solid female-driven World War II films, A Call To Spy continues to turn the tide of how cinema defines the “the greatest generation.”

photo by Neil Krug Very few stars in Hollywood shine so brightly. After a handful of roles under his belt, Chadwick Boseman accomplished more in his massive skyrocket to fame than many are ever able to. It's only fitting that Esquire once declared , "Chadwick is telling America's greatest stories." But how these stories were told is just as illuminating and important as Chadwick being the chosen one to tell them.

History's made up of pioneers who have transformed the world as we know it. Too many remain overlooked, forgotten to time and standards or traditions that now seem archaic today. And, movies often a way to shine a light on those whose stories are recognized by their peers and admirers. Engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, who continuously mounts a resurgence in film and television, finally gets the biopic treatment, but it's difficult to discern if it isn't as garbled as his own legacy. Outside of his own inventions, the Serbian-American scientist Tesla (Ethan Hawke) is perhaps most recognized for his feud against his former boss and American inventor Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan). Here, the film loosely explores Tesla's life from the 1893 World’s Fair and onwards, marking the differences in their career and their war on electrical currents - Tesla's alternating current sytem vs Edison's direct current electric power. Director Michael Almereyda doesn't ge...

When it comes to Taylor Swift, her most devoted Swifties always expect something to pop up around the corner. Known as the queen of meticulously dropping hints of what’s to come, she always manages to keep fans on the edge of their seat. With her seventh album Lover  dropping less than a year ago, and a massive pandemic sweeping the world, very few could’ve expected to hear new music after a cancelled summer tour. The next era of her music felt like an eternity away, but only Swift could drop her eighth studio record out of nowhere and blast more of our expectations out of the water. 

Hollywood too often tells a familiar history of World War II. War stories are mostly reserved for heroic tales of the men behind some of the world’s greatest combat missions to defeat Adolf Hitler and establish support for the Allies. Rarely exploring the expansive experiences of women and minorities at the time, a few films are turning the tide of how cinema recollects history. In the similar vein of Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest or Mike Newell’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , Summerland makes for a refreshing escape of self-discovery and fantasy during one of the world’s darkest periods. Set in the English coastal countryside of Kent, academic researcher Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) becomes the guardian of a refuge child Frank (Lucas Bond) whose parents are fighting in the war. Despite the nearby town treating her as the “beast on the beach” for her unladylike behavior, Lamb and Frank develop an unlikely connection that helps unveil a lost romance with a form...

Age creeps up on us steadily. One second we're young and free, and the next we're burdened with too many responsibilities or we don't want to be a burden to our loved ones. What becomes of us when we age and those around us is at the heart of  Relic  - a horror film that makes us come face-to-face with the shock, confusion, and (hopefully) understanding aging inevitably causes. After their grandmother Edna (Robyn Nevin) is reported missing, her daughter and granddaughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and Sam (Bella Heathcote) journeys to her house to find out what happened and discover signs of disarray that makes them realize how severely she's been struggling on her own. When Edna mysteriously re-appears as if nothing happened, her erratic behavior forces them to realize there might be more to her dementia than meets the eye.