Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
Another zombie movie? That was an understandable reaction to Yeon Sang-ho’s 2016 thriller Train to Busan. But, using familiar elements, the director’s unexpected box office smash struck every stock...
View ArticleGet Duked!
A trio of urban delinquents, along with a friendless dork, traverse the Scottish Highlands, lost and scared. A shadowy presence with a gun is stalking them. Though it sounds like the premise for a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Hayao Miyazaki: Kiki’s Delivery Service
Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service begins with our title character staring up at the clouds as they slowly morph and whisk by in a flurry of wind. In a way, it’s the perfect introduction to a...
View ArticleBill & Ted Face the Music
Much like its namesake duo’s excellent metalhead contemporaries from Aurora, Illinois, the Bill & Ted franchise had always felt very much of its time. Yet unlike Wayne and Garth, Bill and Ted can...
View ArticleRevisit: Pink Flamingos
The trash masterpiece Pink Flamingos is both sick and sickening. The former adjective refers to something repulsive, while the latter is drag slang for greatness. John Waters’ best-known film remains...
View ArticleThe Personal History of David Copperfield
I once took a semester-long course on David Copperfield in graduate school, taught by a professor who seemed to have himself sprung from some Dickensian novel. Elderly, hunched, eyes rheumy from...
View ArticleHouse of Cardin
You may have heard his name or seen his brand logo. Perhaps you’ve seen his signature ‘60s Space Age fashion, ‘70s phallic cologne bottle, or popular ties. You’ve probably seen the early ‘60s Beatles’...
View ArticleCentigrade
A feeling of helplessness pervades Brendan Walsh’s Centigrade, and not just because it’s about two people trapped in a car during an ice storm. Once it becomes clear–in the first few minutes–that the...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Too Late
Within the ever-growing annals of Tarantino knock-off cinema, there exists an endless litany of crime fiction pastiche dripping with self-referential dialogue and a crippling adoration for the very...
View ArticleRobin’s Wish
Robin’s Wish is nothing revolutionary in terms of documentary filmmaking. It has a simple nature to it in a cinematic sense, with basic talking heads and B-roll occupying much of the movie’s frames,...
View ArticleOeuvre: Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke
Magic takes on dark forms and greed conjures existential threats in Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 fantasy epic Princess Mononoke. Whereas past films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service...
View ArticleFeels Good Man
Chances are high that you know of Pepe the Frog. Even if you aren’t immediately aware of it, the cartoon amphibian has become a highly visible symbol of far-right ideologies (specifically, that of the...
View ArticleThe Owners
Home invasion horror has seen its fair share of permutations over the decades, from the noir anxiety of Experiment In Terror to the because-you-were-home stalking of The Strangers. Julius Berg’s...
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Revisit: Old Joy
For generations, artists have explored the power and the terror of connecting fully with another human being. Characters in books from E.M. Forster to Carson McCullers have demonstrated the desire to...
View ArticleThe Mole Agent
Once upon a time, there was a young woman and an old man. The woman was deeply concerned for her aging mother, who would need placement in an assisted living room before dementia and general old age...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Stalked By My Doctor: The Return
In the endless quest for pandemic entertainment, the morbidly curious may land on a franchise that seems to operate on the most unpromising of concepts. Nevertheless, Lifetime’s Stalked by My Doctor...
View ArticleChildren of the Sea
The beauty and majesty of the sea is as seemingly boundless as the ocean itself. But can a stunning aesthetic alone carry a film? Children of the Sea pairs vivid marine imagery with dazzlingly rendered...
View ArticleThe Argument
Harold Ramis’ 1993 existential comedy Groundhog Day has penetrated so deeply into the American cultural conversation that even people who have never seen the movie know what it’s about. Director Robert...
View ArticleOeuvre: Hayao Miyazaki: Spirited Away
In 2017, The New York Times named Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away the second greatest film of the current century, right behind Paul Thomas Anderson’s Very Important Masterwork There Will Be Blood. The...
View ArticleSibyl
In Justine Triet’s Sibyl, a melodramatic Turducken of nesting drama plots fails to congeal into a meaningful feature, but the presentation and acting prowess nearly make-up for its rote and perfunctory...
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