Amulet
Demons not only facilitate the spread of the intangible, supernatural notion of evil, they also deliver a physical manifestation of it into the natural world. Such is the conceit behind...
View ArticleYes, God, Yes
We all yearned to be cool growing up. When I was in the fourth grade, a group of boys asked me if I had a “c*nt.” Not having any idea that the word referred to female genitalia and desperate to fit in,...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Amores Perros Turns 20
Cofi, the Rottweiler protagonist of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros, finds himself at the wrong end of a gun barrel not once or twice, but three distinct times. While this situation...
View ArticleGordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
Now 81 years old, Gordon Lightfoot has lived a long life that must have enough juicy color and inspiring trajectory to fill a documentary. The Canadian singer-songwriter is one of those ubiquitous...
View ArticleOeuvre: Hayao Miyazaki: The Castle of Cagliostro
Hayao Miyazaki’s career began even before the founding of Studio Ghibli, with the peculiar 1979 caper flick The Castle of Cagliostro, an outlier in the Lupin III series unique to Miyazaki’s...
View ArticleSummerland
The saccharine drama Summerland wastes no time establishing the prickliness of its protagonist. Upon encountering a child whining for candy at a shop counter, reclusive writer Alice (Gemma Arterton)...
View ArticleRediscover: Kuro
Just four-and-a-half minutes into Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko’s Kuro (2017), we begin to notice its signature gap. Up to this point, we see and hear protagonist Romi (played by co-director Noriko,...
View ArticleRed Penguins
Filmmakers have used hockey to tell funny, violent stories about the lowest of sports underdogs (think: Slap Shot, The Mighty Ducks, Goon). Now, a documentary can be added to this tradition. Red...
View ArticleThe Shadow of Violence
The threat of violence follows small town tough guy Douglas “Arm” Armstrong like his own shadow, but the tragic irony of his story is that he really doesn’t want to hurt anyone. In The Shadow of...
View ArticleThe Fight
One of the pieces of advice that was passed around online after Donald Trump became president was to keep a list of everything that changes over the span of his term. Experts explained that...
View ArticleOeuvre: Hayao Miyazaki: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Following the success of The Castle of Cagliostro, Hayao Miyazaki began plotting a follow-up that was so ambitious he had to develop the idea as a manga series before he could bring it to the big...
View ArticleShe Dies Tomorrow
Early into Amy Seimetz’ latest film She Dies Tomorrow, the pervasive sense of dread her self-named protagonist can’t seem to shake feels like any other indie flick depiction of suicidal depression....
View ArticleWaiting for the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarians is fiction, adapted by screenwriter J.M. Coetzee from his own 1980 novel; but it has at least one historical precedent in fact. The country in which it takes place and the...
View ArticlePsychomagic: A Healing Art
“Reason needs to be taught to speak the language of dreams,” declares French-Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky in his new documentary. That language, oddly enough, resonates with prop comedian...
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Rediscover: Betty Blue
Most American audience members likely found Betty Blue (1986) on a list of best sex scenes in film. And yes, the opening minutes of the movie still titillates. But there is more to Jean-Jacques...
View ArticleBlack Is King
Beyoncé’s latest “visual album” is at once a dazzling celebration of Blackness and a companion piece to a remake of a loose adaptation of Hamlet. Black Is King is fundamentally a glorious, if...
View ArticleCreem: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine
The major takeaway from director Scott Crawford’s documentary is that Creem, the innovative and irreverent magazine that ran from 1969 to 1989, was a very important artifact in rock music history....
View ArticleI Used to Go Here
Take it from the professor writing this review: the fall 2020 semester is likely to be the strangest college term in living memory. Ordinarily, the on-campus experience is a rich subject for film...
View ArticleHoly Hell! The Cell Turns 20
Revisiting Tarsem’s The Cell 20 years after its release, there’s no denying it would be a harder sell in 2020. Bryan Fuller’s cult Hannibal series from a few years back traded in similar, if more...
View ArticleThe Tax Collector
David Ayer loves Los Angeles. Most of his films—both his writing efforts and his directing ones—use the city as the backdrop for their often violent storylines. He enjoys LA’s outsized reputation for...
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