Bernard Boo's Movie Reviews
All movie reviews written by Bernard Boo
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Red Flag (SFJFF Review)
Alex Karpovsky (most famously known for his work in Lena Dunham’s Girls and Tiny Furniture) plays an (assumedly) extra-neurotic version of himself á la Larry David in Red Flag, a meta dark comedy that’s somehow both navel-gazey and droningly indifferent. The...
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Fruitvale Station
On New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a black 22-year-old Bay Area resident was pulled off a BART train and taken into custody by a police officer. Unarmed and defenseless, he was shot in the back and killed on...
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Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
When it comes to learning any kind of skilled craft, the fastest route to mastery is learning from the masters themselves. “The way you want to learn is by someone you respect showing you something” proclaims Ricky Jay, the...
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A Band Called Death
“’Pure rock ‘n’ roll is what they don’t play on the radio.’ That’s what David always said.” More than a rock-doc, though it sure does rock, Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett’s A Band Called Death is a story...
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I’m So Excited
Returning to his absurdist comedy roots after taking years off, Pedro Almodóvar keeps it (mostly) playful with his unfiltered, druggy, cocktail-crazy sex party in the sky, I’m So Excited. 90 percent of the film is set on an airplane...
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Byzantium
Since the advent of color in film, gushing red stuff has been one of cinema’s most enduring images—the sight of blood seldom fails to trigger something in us. Blood can be spectacular (Kill Bill), repulsive (Evil Dead), or erotic...
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The Out List (Frameline37 Review)
In The Out List—the newest entry in the forward-thinking HBO interview series that started with The Black List Volumes 1-3 and The Latino List—director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders sits both high and low-profile members of the gay community in front of...
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Much Ado About Nothing
For fun, Joss Whedon likes to hold late-night drunken Shakespeare readings with his friends at his Los Angeles home (because who doesn’t?). Much Ado About Nothing, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s (arguably) best comedy, is an elaborately staged movie version...
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The Kings of Summer
There are a lot of wonderful components at work in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ feature debut— a savvy, clever screenplay, gorgeous nature-porn cinematography, a heaping helping of ‘80s nostalgia, and a genuinely funny cast—he just doesn’t quite fit them together. Every...
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Before Midnight
In Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (1995), twentysomethings Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a gruffly charming American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French beauty with a wily intellect, meet on a train headed to Vienna. They talk…talk…talk the night away, fall in...