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Revisit: World of Wong Kar-Wai
Samuel Johnson said, “No man was ever great by imitation,” but in show business, it’s a fine place to start. For Wong Kar-wai, imitation was a means by which to forge his own, unmistakable style. In...
View ArticleSAS: Red Notice
One can detect the literary qualities of SAS: Red Notice, screenwriter Laurence Malkin’s adaptation of the novel Red Notice, which was positioned as the first of a self-contained trilogy of novels from...
View ArticleTrust
Kristen Lazarian’s stage play “Push,” a dramatic exploration of the nature of infidelity, holds a fair share of similarities to Patrick Marber’s show “Closer,” only less poetic, less textured. So, it...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
All blockbusters want to be the next Star Wars to some degree or another. But few have internalized what makes Star Wars great: it builds a universe full of cool shit that’s as likely to render a child...
View ArticleThe Courier
In The Courier, a new film featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in a true story as a British civilian businessman conscripted into a spy game between the United States and the Soviets, it becomes far too...
View ArticleOeuvre: David Cronenberg: Cosmopolis
If David Cronenberg spent the ‘00s sublimating his body horror into a more realistic view of the carnage that can be and often is wrought on human flesh, the director pivoted once more at the top of...
View ArticleDoors
One day, the doors appeared, and within weeks, millions were missing or presumed dead. Well, it is kind of a misnomer to call the alien objects “doors,” but that is the moniker given to them by the...
View ArticleDark State
Once the realization of what writer/director Tracy Lucca is trying to do in Dark State sets in, it moves far past the point of no return and into the arena of the genuinely irresponsible. Ostensibly,...
View ArticleRevisit: Mouse Hunt
Gore Verbinski’s 1997 directorial debut Mouse Hunt begins with a quote by fictional string factory magnate Rudolf Smuntz: “A world without string is chaos.” In the opening scene that follows, Rudolf is...
View ArticlePhobias
There’s always room for a little more novelty. The greatness of the greatest horror films tends to have less to do with their concepts than their execution but a neat, novel little idea propelling them...
View ArticleFunny Face
Watching a low-budget, under-the-radar independent film such as Funny Face, one may be struck by the odd political idea not necessarily embedded in the film’s text. After all, cut loose from the studio...
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Holy Hell! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Turns 20
The wizarding world of J.K. Rowling’s creation began on the page in 1997, which makes it a little surprising to consider how quickly a film adaptation came together. By the time Harry Potter and the...
View ArticleOeuvre: David Cronenberg: Maps to the Stars
David Cronenberg spent his entire career making films outside of the Hollywood studio system, financing his productions independently and filming mostly in and around his native Toronto or in studios...
View ArticleNobody
In Nobody, an unassuming man with a dark past uses his particular set of skills against a platoon of bad guys and their boss, who have greatly underestimated with whom they are dealing. If it sounds a...
View ArticleThe Toll
The road less traveled makes all the difference in The Toll. When GPS randomly detours a rideshare driver and his passenger down an isolated dirt road in the dead of night, it leads them onto a...
View ArticleNina Wu
A paranoid delusion plays out ― or does it? ― in Nina Wu, a psychodrama told at the speed of a leisurely walk through your neighborhood park. There is also a mystery at the center of cowriter/director...
View ArticleShoplifters of the World
The Smiths break up, and it has an unusual impact upon a foursome of directionless young adults and one very strange gunman in Shoplifters of the World – so named, of course, for their similarly titled...
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Rediscover: Toni
Is it possible that Jean Renoir predicted the Italian neorealism movement? By the mid-’30s, the French director had spent the last decade making a name for himself, churning out more than a film per...
View ArticleGodzilla vs. Kong
Swinging for the fences was once a very viable approach to blockbuster filmmaking. Not so today, with studios more prescriptive than ever about what their hundreds of millions of dollars can be spent...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Miss Tulip Stays the Night
Streaming services are overflowing with forgotten B-movie mysteries that tend to blend into each other. Anybody scouring Prime or YouTube for an hourish-long feature they can easily walk away from will...
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