Luke Grimes Archives | Deep Focus Review

Eddington

Brian Eggert — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:53:21 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. Ari Aster dissects the culture war with Eddington, a portrait of how COVID-19 irrevocably tore America apart at its already frayed seams. The pandemic intensified partisan rancor, social fragmentation, and reactionary behavior—conditions that enabled opportunists to seize power amid the chaos and, ultimately, profit from it. Set in late May 2020, the film looks back five years at the titular New Mexico town, seemingly in an attempt to understand what led to the erosion of democracy in Trump’s America today. Described as a Western in the promotional materials, it’s also a period piece, though the time hardly feels that long ago, much to the film’s detriment. Still, Aster captures the uncertainty, paranoia, and desperate search for answers that drove people to rely on the worst possible source: social media. Rather than offering clarity, it only deepened the divide between the right and left, as both sides leaned into their worst impulses and most extreme reactions. Fortunately, Eddington boasts an excellent cast, led by another tour-de-force performance by Joaquin Phoenix under Aster’s direction. It’s unquestionably well-crafted and brimming with the director’s anxiety-ridden style. But the question remains: Is now the right time for […]

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Fifty Shades of Grey

Brian Eggert — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:15 +0000

A cheap sexual fantasy designed for mass consumption, Fifty Shades of Grey approaches the otherwise risqué subject of BDSM and neuters it. Rather than fully explore the dark realms of sadism or even adequately investigate an unhealthy abusive relationship, this adaptation retreads clichés in a format best suited for the dullest of mainstream viewers. Having not read E.L. James’ first (or second, or third) book in her trilogy, my view on the phenomenon and controversy may be limited. But after enduring the film, I can write that any fuss made about the exploitative nature of director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation hasn’t considered what a tedious, completely dismissible film lies before us. Here’s a film that is offensive only in how inoffensive it proves to be. It transforms what should be a complicated, lurid relationship between a dominant and submissive into a laughable formula about an innocent girl and her mysterious man. She’s an awkward bookworm; he’s a wealthy control freak. Mix these stereotypes together with a bondage fetish, and you get something akin to Pride and Prejudice with kink—except neither romantic nor erotic nor even boundary-pushing. With much lower-lip-biting to cornball effect, Dakota Johnson plays the mousy Anastasia Steele (the resident […]

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American Sniper

Brian Eggert — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

During an early scene in director Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Chris Kyle’s father tells his preteen sons that there are three kinds of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. With a noble expression on his young face, the boy version of the U.S. military’s most accomplished sniper accepts his lot in life to become a sheepdog—a protector—and in turn, saddles himself with a grave responsibility. Decades later, high above on the rooftops of Fallujah and Ramada hot zones, Kyle rested his rifle on a steady base and peered through his scope for insurgent targets. He was credited with 160 confirmed kills over four tours of duty, an unprecedented record. Played by Bradley Cooper, Kyle’s status becomes mythic, shifting from a cowboy to a patriot, and in time earning the nickname “The Legend” among his fellow troops. And his representation onscreen is just as exalting, since Eastwood has foregone the less dignified episodes of his subject’s real life in favor of a romanticized portrait. He’s humble and heroic, comparable to a modern-day Sergeant York. The film begins with Kyle sniping during the war and then flashes back to his childhood, where his father embeds life lessons about honor and […]

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