Micheal Ward 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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The Book of Clarence

Brian Eggert — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 01:00:13 +0000

In 2021, when everyone was preoccupied with the pandemic, Jeymes Samuel burst onto the scene in all his multihyphenate glory with The Harder They Fall, a revisionist Western boasting a stacked all-Black cast and a postmodern aesthetic. The musician-turned-filmmaker returns with his second ambitious feature, The Book of Clarence, another patchwork of influences that, in any given scene, might channel the cinema of William Wyler, Stanley Kubrick, or Monty Python. Blending skillful referentiality and bold storytelling, Samuel once again proves that he’s an inspired visual director who playfully dabbles in various styles and tones, depending on what the moment requires. But what begins as an almost farcical look at religion, reminiscent of Life of Brian (1979), quickly trails off into a dour and grandiose religious sermon. The film operates like a particularly inspired Sunday school lesson, which, the hilarity and irreverence of the lesson’s presentation aside, still feels like it’s robbing my Sunday of something better. The general conceit is enough to conjure a laugh. LaKeith Stanfield plays Clarence, a drug-dealing opportunist in Jerusalem who wants to become Jesus’ 13th apostle, but his reasons are selfish. Owing money to a local bookie, Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), which he borrowed […]

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Empire of Light

Brian Eggert — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:22:54 +0000

An early scene in Empire of Light finds Stephen (Micheal Ward) and Hilary (Olivia Colman), two Empire Cinema employees in England’s coastal town of Margate, nursing a wounded pigeon. When Hilary shows Stephen the abandoned upstairs lobby on his first day, they find an injured bird in the dust and debris. Stephen demonstrates how to wrap the pigeon’s broken wing and then uses his sock to hold the wrap in place. Days later, they return upstairs and set the bird free. Writer-director Sam Mendes uses this scene to anticipate the relationship between Stephen and Hilary, both wounded in their ways, in need of healing, and yearning for freedom. Mendes’ unsubtle symbolism extends to the title as well. Empire of Light takes place around the vintage moviehouse, where a beam of light flickers on a screen and illuminates an entire world into which moviegoers can escape. Using the metaphor of light that creates motion and life out of celluloid moving at 24 frames per second, Mendes portrays life as a series of events, escapes, and detours. If his themes remain obvious, Mendes at least directs some excellent performances in a film that often looks pristine. Mendes sets his film in 1981, […]

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