Super Frenchie
The universal quandary faced by every filmmaker whose project concerns an extraordinary subject is quite how to convey their extraordinariness. It’s one thing to describe it, display it, prove it...
View ArticleThe Amusement Park
George Romero wasn’t what one might call a subtle director, as seen in the societal microcosm of Night of the Living Dead, the mall’s beyond-the-grave consumer magnetism in Dawn of the Dead, or the...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: The Invisible Man
It’s entirely possible to make an effective horror film about serious, personal, sensitive and uncomfortable themes that also works on the genre level, but The Invisible Man is content to act only as a...
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Oeuvre: Fellini: Satyricon
By 1969, Federico Fellini was not only one of world cinema’s most acclaimed contemporary figures–he was also one of its most interesting artists. Having spent the preceding two decades developing and...
View ArticleIn the Heights
In the Heights is a vibrant, unselfconscious celebration of many things. The specific contours of a tight-knit community living in Washington Heights, Nueva York. The panoply of Spanish-language...
View ArticleCensor
Enid (Niamh Algar), the protagonist of Censor, probably should not have the occupation that she does. By the end of this cinematic fever dream, that much is clear, even if not much else about...
View ArticleHoller
Like Nomadand, the dramatic thriller Holler looks at what ordinary people must do when they lose one economic opportunity after another. But unlike the characters in this year’s Best Picture winner,...
View ArticleRevisit: Mission: Impossible II
Two decades ago, John Woo was midway through his tenure in Hollywood and riding high on the crest of the box office success and critical acclaim that had greeted his 1997 blockbuster, Face/Off. Tom...
View ArticleRogue Hostage
There are, in fact, many hostages who go rogue in Rogue Hostage, a deeply disposable thriller set almost entirely in one location. This is another one of those movies about a capable military man...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Riding in Cars with Boys Turns 20
“This is why therapists are wealthy,” begins the voiceover narration of what would ultimately be both Penny Marshall and Drew Barrymore’s most underrated work, Riding in Cars with Boys. The film, based...
View ArticleSublet
Michael (John Benjamin Hickey) immediately cuts a meek profile in Eytan Fox’s Sublet as he quietly flies into Tel Aviv, so easy to not notice that people accidentally bump into him walking along the...
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Oeuvre: Fellini: I Clowns
Fellini began the 1970s with a decade’s worth of masterpieces behind him. He had earned multiple international awards, all richly deserved, including three Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, and...
View ArticleRita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
It is weirdly annoying to watch a mediocre film about someone you admire. Not every biographical documentary has to be The Fog of War, yet there is a cloying quality to this subgenre precisely because...
View ArticleThe Sparks Brothers
Director Edgar Wright has shifted from inspired genre exercises like Shaun of the Dead to music documentary, with mixed results. The Sparks Brothers is an ambitious chronicle of brothers Ron and...
View ArticleGaia
Amid the past year’s pandemic hardships and the intensifying threat of climate change, it seemed only natural for eco-horror to make a resurgence among genre cinema. Early this year, Ben Wheatley’s In...
View ArticleSiberia
Abel Ferrara’s Siberia opens in the sedate register of many of his recent films, introducing the protagonist, Clint (Willem Dafoe), via a voiceover recollection of childhood trips to the tundra of...
View ArticleSweet Thing
Alexandre Rockwell uses artful cinematographic and storytelling techniques to craft intimate films that explore flawed characters. Sweet Thing, the writer-director’s first feature film in seven years,...
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Rediscover: The Human Condition
Although the conflagration of World War II has passed into the embers of history as its veterans have died off and time has inevitably marched on, the war is important not only for its sweeping scope...
View ArticleFinding Ophelia
Though it borrows its title from a character in Hamlet, Finding Ophelia seems more intent on embodying a memorable line from Macbeth: it is a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Borrowing...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Cube
When it comes to brainy, weird sci-fi, 1997 was a banner year. A number of films hit the multiplexes that pushed boundaries and set expectations for the audience to do a bit of mental exertion to...
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