Movie Reviews
Get the latest movie reviews from our in-house critics, Shirrel Rhoades and Ian Brockway. You’ll also find reviews from film festivals and advance screening movies. Do you have what it takes to be a Guest movie reviewer? Send us your review to info@TropicCinema.com for approval and maybe you’ll earn a spot! Want to make sure you never miss a review? Follow the Tropic on Facebook for daily updates!
Front Row at the Movies: The Report
Jones’s relentless pursuit of the truth plays like a political thriller. His decade-long investigation produced a 6,700-page report that uncovered “brutal, immoral, and ineffective forms of torture being used by the CIA. But getting the report published was difficult as both the CIA and White House tried to block it.
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Tropic Sprockets: Parasite
“Parasite” is Bong Joon-Ho's most expansive and detailed film to date. With aspects of noir, horror, black comedy, and social commentary, it exudes great humanism. From the very first instant it teases, jokes and pulls one in. It has scarcely an empty moment, remaining gripping throughout.
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Tropic Sprockets: Harriet
Tubman leaps from the screen under the direction of Kasi Lemmons ("Eve’s Bayou"). Though conventionally told in biopic fashion, the film is brisk and lively with accents of a suspense story. The story of Tubman’s life should well be front and center and this film is a welcome addition to cinema.
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Front Row at the Movies: The Lighthouse
Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) is sent to the island to serve his apprenticeship with an older keeper named Thomas Wake (William Dafoe). Wake gives Winslow the tough jobs -- refueling the light, lugging kerosene canisters up the narrow steps, and emptying chamber pots. You’d suspect they are not going to be the best of friends.
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Tropic Sprockets: Pain and Glory
“Pain and Glory” is a portrait of a once rebellious man who is absorbed by memory almost to the point of dissolution. The aspect of brilliant color (an Almodovar trademark) is both a caress from a nostalgic love and a vexing taunt, a salacious tease of what once occurred, but can never be repeated again.
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Tropic Sprockets: The Lighthouse
Some Grand Guignol by the sea is the order of the day, but the real star of “The Lighthouse” is the photography and sound design depicting sheets of slashing rain, mud and shit, along with the screech of an orgiastic mermaid that becomes the vindictive call of a gull.
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Front Row at the Movies: Pain and Glory
Almodóvar says that Banderas is to him what Marcello Mastroianni was to Federico Fellini. Mastroianni, of course, was Federico Fellini’s cinematic alter ego. And “8 ½” was Fellini’s most clearly autobiographical confession, a work that’s considered one of the greatest “films about film” ever made. Yes, Almodóvar likes the comparison.
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Tropic Sprockets: First Love
The best moments of “Loro” are actually its fleshy interludes combined with its strange vignettes. Though “Loro” is not Sorrentino’s strongest work, its fluid movement is eerily entrancing combined with its compelling caution that we (among other nations) have our own boorish shades of Berlusconi.
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Tropic Sprockets: Loro
The best moments of “Loro” are actually its fleshy interludes combined with its strange vignettes. Though “Loro” is not Sorrentino’s strongest work, its fluid movement is eerily entrancing combined with its compelling caution that we (among other nations) have our own boorish shades of Berlusconi.
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Tropic Sprockets: Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Like the last image in a horror film, the most unnerving and terrible aspect of Matt Tyrnauer’s excellent film is that Roy Cohn lives on in death and his public poison still holds, making our country petty, polarizing, and for many, a stubborn shade of orange.
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