Author: Grace Cogan
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“One Battle After Another” – A Chaotic Film for Our Time
Some films hit you like a brick on first viewing, and One Battle After Another is one of them. It’s unruly, overstuffed, and constantly accelerating, as though the movie itself is inhaling the same frantic air as the country it depicts. But when you return to it, the film settles into clarity. All that volatility—the tonal lurches,…
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25 in ’25 #23: “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022)
Top Gun: Maverick arrived in theaters in the summer of 2022 like a flare shot across a darkened sky—bright, unmistakable, and freighted with a message. After two years of shuttered multiplexes, streaming wars, and the uneasy question of whether the theatrical experience might be fading into myth, here came a film that insisted, without hesitation, that…
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25 in ’25 #24: “Elf” (2003)
Few modern Christmas movies have earned the peculiar dual honor of feeling both immediately contemporary and instantly timeless. Elf (2003), Jon Favreau’s cheery, sugar-dusted comedy about a human raised at the North Pole, is one of the rare entries in the holiday canon that managed to capture the collective American imagination and stay there—year after year, rewatch…
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25 in ’25 #25: “Don’t Look Up” (2021)
Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up arrived in December 2021 like a message in a bottle from a civilization already sinking, a film that felt both uncomfortably prescient and almost too on the nose arriving after the second full year of COVID-19 impacting our lives on a daily basis (this was during the rise of the Omicron variant,…
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Once (2007)
Directed by John Carney Drama R 1h 26m A funny thing, life is. It is an extremely rare thing that a movie captures life so beautifully, that it brings tears to my eyes during the opening sequence. “Once” is that film. There is very little dialogue in the first three minutes, just a long shot,…
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A Complete Unknown (2024)
Directed by James Mangold Drama/Biopic R 2h 21m Something somewhat strange happened to me when I saw “A Complete Unknown”. I have never been a Bob Dylan die-hard, although I do deeply respect his writing and will boldly state that several of the songs, he penned are some of the greatest ever written. But listening…
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Saturday Night (2024)
Directed by Jason Reitman Comedy/Thriller/History R 1h 49m Even if you’ve never seen an episode, you know the impact. “More Cowbell” “The Coneheads”, “The Wolverines”, “Emily Litella”, “Matt Foley – Inspirational Speaker”, “The Californians”, “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood”, “Church Lady”, “Close Encounters”, “David Pumpkins”. All are comedy sketches brought to life by the talented ensemble casts of one…
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A Few Good Men (1992)
Directed by Rob Reiner Legal/Thriller R 2h 18m Last week, I remedied a lifelong mistake of having never seen A Few Good Men. I have been a Sorkin fan since seeing his riveting stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird in 2018. What followed was a foray into “The Newsroom” and the deeply lauded “The West Wing.” Other films of…
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Trap (2024)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan Thriller/Horror/Crime PG-13 1h 45m M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, Trap, embarks on an emotional roller-coaster for the first hour, then becomes a dragging dread for the final act. I don’t necessarily mean that the movie is bad, in fact I found it quite entertaining. But the final act of the film, including – what I…
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The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Directed by Frank Darabont Drama/Crime PG-13 2h 22m I first saw The Shawshank Redemption on January 11th, 2019. I was at home, recovering from my first knee surgery and my mother was teaching an evening class over at Benedictine. When my father got home from work, he fed the animals, came in, joined me in the back room, and showed…
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