Vitalina Varela
Much like Wes Anderson, it seems that Pedro Costa is not interested in changing up his filmmaking formula. Viewers know what they are going to get: static long shots taken at night indoors in the...
View ArticleBanana Split
Simply by the nature of its story, Banana Split offers an intriguing inversion of a common romantic-comedy trope: the love triangle of which one person must be kept out of the loop so that the other...
View ArticleVivarium
The longer our current pandemic and its corresponding shelter-in-place orders drag on, the greater the sense that we’re trapped within our own homes. The silver lining to this, of course, is that home...
View ArticleRevisit: Children of Men
Amid a global crisis, it’s funny how quickly the previously unfathomable can become the new normal. As the world hunkers down to combat the spread of coronavirus, revisiting Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006...
View ArticleSlay the Dragon
In any discussion of gerrymandering, the practice of politicians artfully redesigning legislative districts to create leverage, jokes are always made about the contorted shapes these dividing lines...
View ArticleMutant Blast
Fans of B, C, and D-list movies will recognize Troma Entertainment, which has been producing delightfully schlocky films since the 1970s. The most famous of these is The Toxic Avenger, whose titular...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Dinosaur Turns 20
The sixth computer-animated feature film ever, Dinosaur exists in a more rarified time for the genre. It wasn’t a given that a new feature would be computer-animated in 2000; the style was new and...
View ArticleIt Started As a Joke
It Started as a Joke is a documentary about the 10th and final iteration of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, a decade-long institution in the world of alternative comedy that began as a lighthearted...
View ArticleOeuvre: Argento: Deep Red
Having emerged fully formed with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and maintained his streak of quality over his next few films, it may have seemed that Dario Argento had plateaued out of the gate,...
View ArticleClover
You know you’re in for a darkly funny crime caper when Ron Perlman steals the opening scene, chomping on a cigar and growling about apex predators as he shows footage of wolves to unseen visitors in...
View ArticleNever Rarely Sometimes Always
Hollywood films are flooded with precocious teenagers who are often wise beyond their years. The story is familiar: the world is under attack or a family is in some sort of danger. The adults usually...
View ArticleLazy Susan
When a performer finds a vanity project built around showcasing their talents, it’s expected that the audience will forgive certain weaknesses in the overall film so long as the performance at its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Revisit: Bamboozled
One reason it’s difficult to discuss Spike Lee’s films solely in terms of aesthetics or pure form is that they bring so much of the real world into the movie screen. From Lee’s first feature film,...
View ArticleThe Other Lamb
At this juncture, it’s an odd relief to watch a movie about a group of people in social isolation, even one as beautiful, intense and disturbing as director Malgorzata Szumowska and writer Catherine S....
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Zone
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, first published in 1972 is, without question, one of the classics of science fiction and, equally one of the few to explore the idea that any...
View ArticleAbout a Teacher
Above all, About a Teacher is a personal tale. This is obvious when approaching it from just about any angle: The story almost exclusively follows a teacher at a New York City public high school...
View ArticleWhy Don’t You Just Die!
Ultraviolence in cinema can quickly devolve into exploitation and torture porn. But administered artfully, and preferably with heaps of dark humor, such gore can offer soothing escapism. Even more so...
View ArticleOeuvre: Argento: Suspiria
Suspiria, Dario Argento’s 1977 follow-up to Deep Red, reveals several major shifts in his work, even as it clearly builds on the investigation-centric giallo dynamics and eccentric stylings of the...
View ArticleShe’s Allergic to Cats
A simple joke—something like a witty one-liner—offers up so much information under analysis. When a film has a few such jokes, it makes it plain who the intended audience is. Those who are laughing at...
View ArticleShooting Heroin
Shooting Heroin doesn’t have anything new to say about the opioid epidemic, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands in the United States and began with the phenomenon of doctors...
View Article