Tommy Trull - Writer and Musician

Jonathan Helpert’s IO tells the story of a young scientist (Margaret Qualley) carrying on her father’s work on a ruined Earth, whose surviving inhabitants have abandoned it for sanctuary on Io, a moon of Jupiter. She maintains a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend (Tom Payne), who is now on Io. One day, a balloon descends from the sky carrying a man named Micah (Anthony Mackie), who is the first human she’s seen in a long while. This film is deliberately slow and meditative, more intent on exploring its themes than in plot. The first act examines the inner and outer states of a single character, and in the second act, two characters. Only in its third act are we given a sense of purpose and mission. Mythology, adaptability, inheritance, obligation, and human connection are the film’s main concerns as it tells the story of how those who look to the past and those who look to the future coexist with one another. As this movie places so much emphasis on the achievement...

Dan Gilroy’s VELVET BUZZSAW is an extraordinary film. It’s a horror film that takes its cues from BASQUIAT, and an intellectual art film that takes its cues from IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. Working from his own screenplay, Gilroy tells the story of a group of art world movers and shakers who are profoundly and disastrously affected by the discovery of a deceased outsider artist named Ventril Dease. From its stylish opening credits, the film establishes itself as an intensely visual experience. Some of the art openings involve long, winding tracking shots that allow us to be tourists through several let’s-be-nice-and-call-them-sophisticated conversations. Gilroy certainly takes a mocking attitude toward the extremes of high culture. In fact, characters mistake ordinary garbage for installation pieces on more than one occasion. Throughout the film, Robert Eswit’s cinematography dazzles. (One shot in particular, in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s character enters a sunlit factory, deserves an e...