Film Inquiry

1 week 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.

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Tynan Yanaga

If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, at 5 years old, I would have said, “A baseball player.” A few years into a Little League career I probably already knew I would never make it, but even if you leave baseball, when you’re introduced to it early, baseball never leaves you. It doesn’t need to be a career if it’s a part of your life. There’s something elemental about it even to this day.

2 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Kristy Strouse

With his newest short film Liquor Bank, Writer/Director Marcellus Cox continues to capture gripping moments of human fragility on screen. This 15 minute drama takes us into the apartment of veteran Eddie (Antwone Barnes) as he wakes up after a night of drinking. Having missed his year of sobriety party the night before, his sponsor, Baker (Sean Alexander James) checks in on him.

2 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Soham Gadre

Last year was the first time I was introduced to the Museum of the Moving Image’s “First Look” program and I was so surprised by the selection of films and especially Lois Patiño‘s  Samsara, which became my favorite film of 2024 and topped all of my year-end lists, that I couldn’t wait to cover the program again this year. The value of something like MoMIs “First Look” is that it decidedly focuses on experimental, documentary, and international cinema.

2 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Kristy Strouse

A focus of many specials since his passing in 1984 (though many believed it was a prank) Andy Kaufman still remains of the most iconic comedians of his time. Though, he would frown at that phrasing. Like many before, Alex Braverman‘s Thank You Very Much takes on the near impossible task of showing who this enigmatic anti-comedian comedy star was. The film starts off from Kaufman‘s own direction, an interesting format to thrust us into his particular brand of hilarity that was inherently unique.