Clement Tyler Obropta

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

One of life’s cruelest inevitabilities is that the people we love most grow old and die. And unfortunately, the final years of our lives also happens to be when we’re at our most vulnerable — when our minds are slower, our memories faded and confused, and our bodies infirm. And where there are vulnerable people, there are greedy private equity firms circling like vultures.

3 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

Something happened to Wes Anderson. Twenty years ago, he was the new auteur on the block. With indie hits like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, he established a distinctive style, one of charming, well-written, complex characters; whimsical and dogmatically stylized compositions; unique color palettes; and witty scripts crackling with dry humor. He has beyond a doubt the most recognizable aesthetic style in contemporary cinema. But lately, his work has fallen off — at least for me.

2 months ago | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

At our most cynical moments, we can reduce most films in our minds to gorgeous people reading smart lines in luxurious rooms. Black Bag is director Steven Soderbergh’s latest, a tight little picture that, depending on your mood, can be either an empty exercise in style and genre or a vibrant and intelligent chamber drama. As with many of Soderbergh’s films, the cinematic technique is excellent — you’d be hard-pressed to find a more reliable cinematic craftsperson working today.

2 months ago | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

It’s official — the United Kingdom has The Penguin Lessons fever. Posters for this thing, depicting Steve Coogan mugging beside a penguin on a bench, are plastered on every bus and in every bus station and cinema lobby. I can’t go to the cinema in Scotland without seeing a trailer for the film, which stars a penguin as a lighthearted cosmic wanderer who arrives unwittingly at a young boys’ school in Argentina in the 1970s. Jonathan Pryce co-stars as the strict headmaster.

Mar 3, 2025 | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys follows a young man, Elwood (Ethan Herisse), as he is unjustly arrested and imprisoned in the Nickel Academy reform school for boys. There, he meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), and together the two try to stay alive. The film illustrates a deep, buried history of racist, abusive boarding schools in America, but it’s far more than just a history lesson.