Come to Daddy
The cringey confrontation of Freudian father issues explodes into gonzo ultraviolence in Ant Timpson’s feature debut, Come to Daddy. Opening with the awkward Norval (Elijah Wood) arriving on the...
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Revisit: Europa Europa
Sometimes the most extraordinary stories are true. If Europa Europa, Agnieszka Holland’s 1990 World War II drama, has a story that feels as forced as Forrest Gump at times, one cannot accuse a lazy...
View ArticleAnd Then We Danced
And Then We Danced, writer-director Levin Akin’s queer, dance-centric coming-of-age story, screened at Cannes and was Sweden’s entry to the Academy Awards, and its quality is undeniable, particularly...
View ArticleCane River
Never released before its maker’s death and long thought lost, Horace B. Jenkins’s Cane River is a fascinating curio. Set in the rural Natchitoches Parish of Louisiana, the film begins with Peter...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: The Fate of the Furious
No Paul? No…problem? While not the official tagline of The Fate of the Furious, it sums up the film’s approach to a newly Paul Walker-less Fast and the Furious franchise. Worried about the effect of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Tarkovsky: Nostalghia
After completing Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky went to Italy to make the documentary Voyage in Time. While there, he wrote the script for his next feature, Nostalghia, which he also intended to shoot in...
View ArticleThe Assistant
The Assistant falls into a sort of criticism gray zone, representing a vacuous Goldilocks just-rightness that suffers for its unwillingness to be either too hot or too cold. It is not a film that...
View ArticleBuffaloed
Tanya Wexler’s Buffaloed stands out among the recent crop of self-aware, Scorsesean comedies about late capitalism for a few reasons. First, the activities of its protagonist are, in comparison to...
View ArticleI Was at Home, But
I Was at Home, But is, on the one hand, a film with a lot going on. It includes at least four different strands: a frame narrative about the friendship between a dog and a donkey, an examination of a...
View ArticleRevisit: The Year of Living Dangerously
It’s a peculiar delight to revisit Peter Weir’s chronically-underrated 1982 romantic drama, as it’s the kind of film they don’t make anymore, for better and for worse. Starring then-new superstars...
View ArticleVFW
Fast-paced and full of winks and nods, Joe Begos’ VFW is an unexpected treat. The latest in a string of quality releases from the genre-specific RLJE Films (which recently released the well-received...
View ArticleCorpus Christi
Who among us hasn’t, at one time, felt like an impostor, about to be busted for occupying a role we shouldn’t be in? The power of the enchanting Polish film Corpus Christi lies in the tension between...
View ArticleThe Times of Bill Cunningham
We are obviously meant to be in thrall of the late subject of Mark Bozek’s The Times of Bill Cunningham, a brief and, unfortunately, rather dull documentary of the famed fashion historian (he resists...
View ArticleOeuvre: Tarkovsky: Voyage in Time
Voyage in Time is often described as Andrei Tarkovsky’s only non-fiction work, a technically accurate classification that also ignores the film’s actual presentation, which doesn’t always fit so neatly...
View ArticleOnce Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band
The worthiness of Daniel Roher’s new documentary lies almost entirely in its soundtrack. That shouldn’t surprise anyone about Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, a straightforward but...
View ArticleThe Night Clerk
Michael Cristofer’s The Night Clerk isn’t just a bad movie; it’s three half-hearted stories smashed into one poorly executed 90-minute narrative. It’s romantic tale of a man finding love; it’s a crime...
View ArticleYoung Ahmed
The Dardenne brothers’ Young Ahmed wastes little time in establishing the zealotry and obstinance of its young protagonist (Idir Ben Addi). We meet Ahmed studying mathematics and being helped in exam...
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Revisit: Roma
Alfonso Cuarón’s latest triumph Roma is at once personal and sociological, individual and universal, intimate and sweeping. These polar forces don’t act in opposition; they interlock with magnetic...
View ArticleGoldie
Featuring model and reality television star Slick Woods in a star-is-born leading role, Goldie is the kind of performance-driven indie that too often slips through the cracks of film distribution....
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Sweetheart
With cinemas serving up hot horror garbage like Brahms: The Boy 2, The Turning, The Grudge and Fantasy Island, it’s suddenly become harder to find a reliably crap horror movie on streaming. Netflix,...
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