Education is Small Axe‘s punctuation mark and the film that brings the entire project to an inspired and even celebratory conclusion. Regardless of whether one thinks of Small Axe as a collection of films or a sort of variegated television miniseries event (either way, its…
Like Fences before it, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is another well-intention August Wilson adaptation that can’t seem to rise above its stagy origins. Adapted from the 1982 stage play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a film that stubbornly refuses to shake its…
My Prince Edward is presided over by star Stephy Tang and director Norris Wong, both of whom reject schematism in favor of more subtle, surprising work. No pop star acts quite like Stephy Tang. Most singers who turn to movies carry some kind of flamboyance…
The Prom doesn’t offer much in the way of insight or novelty, but its glitz-and-glitter styling is a welcome confection at the end of 2020. Ryan Murphy’s name has become so synonymous with small screen camp that his feature filmmaking career has been somewhat overlooked.…
Alex Wheatle is the slightest of the Small Axe films in many ways, but it’s also perhaps the most instructive as to the project’s overarching concerns. Having left festival season behind and with the majority now available to the public, the scope and collective structure of Steve…
There is potential potency to the character work in A Family Tour, but the flat direction renders nearly every scene frustratingly inert. There’s no shortage of justified anger in Ying Liang’s semi-autobiographical A Family Tour. In following up 2012’s When Night Falls, the film that…
Detention recommends director John Hsu’s future efforts, but this debut effort falls mostly short of the mark. John Hsu’s debut feature Detention isn’t so much a horror film with political undertones as it is a historical, political drama with brief flashes of horror imagery. Unfortunately,…
Red, White and Blue is incisive and deeply felt, but its conclusions don’t quite feel big enough for its format. Having now seen three of Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe films (the final two held hostage by Amazon until December), it’s easier to trace out…
Despite its misguided ending, Let Them All Talk remains a refreshingly open-ended and low-stakes pleasure. In the past decade, Adam Sandler has been regularly accused of using filmmaking as an excuse to go on vacation with his friends. The same could arguably be said…
Anything for Jackson successfully manages the tricky balancing act of melding early comedy into outright terror. As festival season has gone mostly digital this year, we here at InRO have been able to cover a lot of films from all over the world. Of course,…
