The Revenant
A quiet beauty lurks in the gory depths of The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s visceral take on the legend of Hugh Glass, the fur trapper who was left for dead by his comrades and then dragged...
View Article45 Years
Andrew Haigh’s Criterion Collection-approved second film, Weekend, was an intimate, sharply observed character study about two young lovers just getting to know each other. In 45 Years, Haigh’s less...
View ArticleAnesthesia
The title of Tim Blake Nelson’s latest directorial effort, Anesthesia, is primed for jokes regarding the experience of watching it. Structurally, it resembles Paul Haggis’ Crash and Altman films, with...
View ArticleRevisit: All or Nothing
It’s understandable that a small film like All or Nothing would get overlooked, falling between two masterpieces (Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake) in the filmography of director Mike Leigh. This 2002 outing...
View ArticleDiablo
If you’ve seen Bone Tomahawk or The Hateful Eight in recent months, you’d be forgiven for thinking the western was having some sort of resurgence. Diablo, then, is a refreshing bucket of cold water on...
View ArticleYosemite
First features, particularly those helmed by nascent French directors, often seem to be inordinately interested in children as a subject. From Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduite through the Nouvelle Vague...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Mission: Impossible Turns 20
When Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible premiered in 1996, nobody predicted it would spawn one of Hollywood’s most enduring franchises. Looking at the film today, it somehow seems even less likely....
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Wes Craven was against the idea of sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) from the very beginning. He had created the now iconic character of Freddy Krueger to be terrifying and sinister – never...
View Article13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
The American flag gets a lot of love from Michael Bay. Every so often he directs his cameramen away from the overwrought chaos of his films to gaze upon the stars and stripes, always in oversaturated...
View ArticleTroublemakers: The Story of Land Art
The story of land art isn’t new. It’s been around since the Pyramids and maybe before that. As framed by filmmaker James Crump, land art is the story of man’s quest to make a mark on the world; to...
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Rediscover: The River
In his unfinished 1946 drama, A Day in the Country, director Jean Renoir films a story of bucolic idyll where a young man and woman are marked by unrequited. Set by the lazy banks of a river, Renoir...
View ArticleLamb
Lamb, an adaptation of writer Bonnie Nadzam’s novel, charts a complex and often troubling relationship between two unlikely companions: a wayward 11-year-old girl and a depressed 47-year-old man. The...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Babe: Pig in the City
The 2016 Academy Award nominations were announced last week, and, to no one’s surprise, there were a number of the usual maddening snubs, particularly with regard to films, such as Creed and Straight...
View ArticleAnomalisa
In today’s cinematic landscape very few screenwriters have made themselves brands quite the way Charlie Kaufman has. There’s Aaron Sorkin with his hypercommunicative liberal super-people. Quentin...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Vampire in Brooklyn
Watching comedy legend Eddie Murphy offer up a straight faced, dramatic performance as a vampire in a Wes Craven film must have been a jarring experience for audiences in 1995; 20 years later, in a...
View ArticleThe 5th Wave
For anyone who saw Clouds of Sils Maria, there is a special joy to be had in watching The 5th Wave. The latest iteration of the Twilight/Hunger Games/Divergent paradigm, it stars the lovely Chloë Grace...
View ArticleIp Man 3
Ip Man, a.k.a. Yip Kai-man, spent much of the 20th century promoting the Chinese art of Wing Chun, his mastery so impressive and influential that it’s now spawned a trio of films, each of them focused...
View ArticleMojave
There’s a very specific brand of pretentious navel-gazing that comes out of a Hollywood screenwriter attempting to dramatize Hollywood itself. Something about turning the cameras on themselves brings...
View ArticleRevisit: Forbidden Planet
Ben Jonson once wrote of his dear friend and friendly rival William Shakespeare that “he was not of an age, but for all time!” Jonson’s tribute has been frequently proven in the hundreds of years since...
View ArticleAferim!
Aferim! is as unusual as its title suggests. It’s a black and white film set in 1835 Wallachia, a region of Romania which dissolved in 1859. Looking at stills of the film, a casual filmgoer may feel...
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