This Much I Know to Be True
This Much I Know to Be True may seem like the third in an unintentional trilogy of films about Nick Cave, but as the musician has settled into the autumn of his career, this outing feels more like a...
View ArticleThe Last Victim
Screenwriter Ashley James Louis and director Naveen A. Chathapuram don’t do anything special with the plot of The Last Victim, but they do afford a lot of atmosphere and credence to a fairly standard...
View ArticleFirestarter
Stephen King has written over 60 novels. He is astonishingly prolific, with a career that spans half a century, so it is inevitable that some of his stories are better than others. Everyone loves...
View ArticleThe Sadness
Horror has always been quick to adapt to shifting cultural paradigms and current events, and a pandemic-driven cinematic wave of nihilistic isolation and eco-horror despair is well underway as seen in...
View ArticleIl Buco
Le Quattro Volte director Michelangelo Frammartino returns with another nearly wordless mix of docudrama and contemplative tone poetry with Il Buco. Set in Italy at the top of ‘60s, a time when the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Claire Denis: The Intruder
Often described as Claire Denis’ most inscrutable movie, The Intruder is nonetheless of a piece with her other work, structured on symbolic and imagistic lines rather than firm narrative ones. Opening...
View ArticleHold Your Fire
If you aren’t reminded of Dog Day Afternoon when you start Hold Your Fire, you will be soon enough. Directed by Stefan Forbes, the documentary follows a real hostage situation that unfolded in Brooklyn...
View ArticleDigger
The world inhabited by the characters of Digger might as well be an alien planet. We know, academically, that the action here takes place in northern Greece as a small community is overtaken by a...
View ArticleMondocane
It turns out there’s something even more dystopian than a post-apocalyptic hellscape, and that’s a story about societal collapse in a world that hasn’t even ended yet. It’s a place that resembles the...
View ArticleRevisit: Gummo
A late friend and colleague once said of the whispered narration from the protagonist in Harmony Korine’s Gummo, “It’s the kind of voice-over that you’d expect to hear in a film directed by Terrence...
View ArticleFacing Nolan
Nolan Ryan is one of the more divisive players among baseball analysts. On one level, his play and statistics are awe-inspiring: he accumulated almost 1000 more strikeouts than anyone else, threw seven...
View ArticleA Taste of Whale
A Taste of Whale doesn’t really seem to have any idea which position it wants us to take on the issue at its core. That would be either (depending on your preconceived notion of the issue) the...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Punch-Drunk Love Turns 20
The more time you sit absorbing 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love, the more the film’s elements begin to take a toll on you. Retrospective analysis reveals the reason why the romantic dramedy , written and...
View ArticleOeuvre: Claire Denis: 35 Shots of Rum
Coming soon on the heels of those twin brutalities, Trouble Every Day (2001) and The Intruder (2004), 35 Shots of Rum (2008) would seem to be a radical departure for director Claire Denis, a warm,...
View ArticleThe Bob’s Burgers Movie
The animated sitcom “Bob’s Burgers” just wrapped its 12th season with “Some Like It Bot,” a two-parter that uses a Blade Runner parody and rude bathroom graffiti to explore the challenges of...
View ArticleTop Gun: Maverick
The original Top Gun is a musical with planes, or a pageant that celebrates MTV culture and the military industrial complex. It barely has a plot, and instead functions as a series of loosely-connected...
View ArticleFanny: The Right to Rock
“One of the most important bands in American rock has been buried without a trace.” That title card, credited to no less than David Bowie, opens the documentary Fanny: The Right to Rock, and it’s a...
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Revisit: Beasts of No Nation
Cary Joji Fukunaga’s short directorial career has been filled with numerous left-turns. Making a name for himself with his debut – the suspenseful Spanish-language thriller, Sin Nombre (2009) –...
View ArticleThere Are No Saints
Perhaps somewhere down deep within There Are No Saints lies an intelligent or even compassionate study of seeking either justice or revenge for a terrible crime. One might even expect such a treatment...
View ArticleHoly Hell! The Rules of Attraction turns 20
All of Bret Easton Ellis’ early novels were made into movies. Mary Harron’s American Psycho is the most famous adaptation. Marek Kanievska’s Less Than Zero may be, though deeply flawed, the most...
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