Oeuvre: Scorsese: Taxi Driver
The deep, lasting impact that Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket had on Paul Schrader has been well-documented throughout his career. It not only famously inspired Schrader to write the screenplay for Taxi...
View ArticleThe Good Boss
Javier Bardem anchors The Good Boss with a strong performance that only casts a greater spotlight upon the weaknesses of the film around him. The actor is one of our more capable performers when it...
View ArticleBreaking
Considering the star power John Boyega currently possesses, it speaks to his integrity as an actor that he is currently acting in projects as low-profile but honorably conceptualized as Abi Damaris...
View ArticleFunny Pages
In Ghost World, a middle-aged loser named Seymour confides to a young woman, “Well, maybe I don’t want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests.” Seymour likes to collect obscure...
View ArticleRevisit: Das Boot
When Wolfgang Petersen passed away earlier this August, a certain kind of action film went away with him. In an age where action films drip with self-awareness and irony, when the mere appearance of...
View ArticlePrivate Desert
Private Desert is a braid of two very different stories, and the alternating narrative focus is both a feature and a bug of this intriguing film from Brazilian writer-director Aly Muritiba. Initially...
View ArticleAlienoid
Attempting to sum up Alienoid‘s plot might sound like genre MadLibs even with the context of its ambitious irreverent adventure. Alien prisons inside human brains and robo-guardians pursuing escapees...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Space Jam 2: A New Legacy
Early last month, the streaming wars entered their latest campaign with a bit of friendly fire from Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., which made the startling decision to convert a completed...
View ArticleOeuvre: Scorsese: New York, New York
For over half a century, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic photo of a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a dental hygienist (who’s uniform apparently reminded him of a military nurse’s) in Times Square was held up as...
View ArticleSaloum
Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot directs his thriller Saloum in a crazed, headlong rush. At under 90 minutes, he jumps through several genres and themes, such as colonization, child soldiers,...
View ArticleBurial
Long after the last World War II veteran passes away – there are only hundreds left – we will still see countless films about that conflict. The stakes are easy to understand, serving as a metaphor for...
View ArticleRediscover: Goodnight Mommy
Arthouse horror had a banner year in 2014, as three particular films, each dealing with either copulation or procreation, firmly entrenched elevated horror into the film criticism lexicon. While the...
View ArticleLoving Highsmith
Best known for her works Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt (later published under the title Carol), Patricia Highsmith led a life of many contradictions. Born to a...
View ArticlePeter Von Kant
There’s a tangled web of relationships both within François Ozon’s Peter Von Kant and between this film and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Ozon’s film is “freely...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Panic Room Turns 20
One would be forgiven for believing that the only reasonable reaction to the past couple of years is to hide away in a panic room. A global pandemic, political turmoil, wealth inequality, climate...
View ArticleTrue Things
Kate’s life could not be more monotonous. She lives alone in the English seaside town where she grew up, and her parents worry she has no future. Not only is Kate single while pushing 40, but she also...
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Oeuvre: Scorsese: The Last Waltz
Many great directors are overachievers, obsessives for whom the construction of immaculately designed cinematic worlds is an extension of some intrinsic need to impose order upon entropy, or just...
View ArticleThe Story of Film: A New Generation
Mark Cousins’ epic 2011 documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey was an essential yet strangely divisive investigation into the first century of the art of cinema. Consisting of 15 hourlong episodes,...
View ArticleHold Me Tight
Mathieu Amalric’s Hold Me Tight is a fractured character study of Clarisse (Vicky Krieps), a wife and mother of two who is fleeing her family to start a new solo life. The film shows both Clarisse on...
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Rediscover: Devi
In a body of work that includes The Music Room, the Apu Trilogy and Charulata, Satyajit Ray’s sixth feature, Devi (1960) is an unfairly overlooked gem that is dwarfed by the director’s masterpieces...
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