My Policeman
Stodgy and deliberate, the period drama My Policeman might have seemed revolutionary if it had been released 15 years ago. As it stands, the film is the British answer to Brokeback Mountain, depicting...
View ArticleSlayers
Co-writer/director K. Asher Levin has a point to make with Slayers, a surprisingly low-rent and low-imagination horror-comedy set in a world where vampires exist and social media influence has rotted...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Trouble in Mind
From the very start, Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind is practically engulfed by a distinctly melancholic mood as Marianne Faithfull’s soulful voice propels the title track, backed by a plaintive,...
View ArticleOeuvre: Scorsese: New York Stories
Even if you’ve never made it to New York City yourself—experienced the humid rush of the subway trains, seen the wiggling trash bags as rats rummage through them or walked underneath the towering...
View ArticleArmageddon Time
When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, there was a prediction in some corners that the anger and frustration resulting from his presidency would translate into an increase in great art. After...
View ArticlePlease Baby Please
Ostensible cookie-cutter straight couple Suze (Andrea Riseborough) and Arthur (Harry Melling) are walking down the street to a gathering when they witness an act of violence. The perpetrators resemble...
View ArticleCall Jane
The story being told in Call Jane is undeniably an important and, through something of an accident of timing, particularly vital one. Screenwriters Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi transport the audience...
View ArticleThe System
Here is an aggressively mediocre action thriller, which does precisely nothing interesting with its barely existent premise. Even commenting on such a film that inspires no particularly interesting...
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Rediscover: The Learning Tree
The Learning Tree carries the distinction of being the first major studio film made by a Black director. Such a historical marker brings with it a plethora of baggage but photographer turned filmmaker...
View ArticleHoly Spider
Saeed Hanaei killed 16 women before he was arrested and executed. But Holy Spider, a film about the Hanaei and the journalist who pursued him, does not follow the path of a typical serial killer film....
View ArticleTen-Cent Daisy
To choose a life of domesticity or one of self-sufficiency is thought to be a choice many women must make when at a reproductive age. However, the scope between that dichotomy reveals much more gray...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: From Beyond
One year after releasing gory comedy-horror gem Re-Animator, b-movie mavens Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna returned to the undulating well of H.P. Lovecraft. They even got the band back together,...
View ArticleBardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Not long into fussily titled Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Silverio Gacho (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a famous documentary filmmaker, remarks to his personal driver “if you can’t play...
View ArticleThe Banshees of Inisherin
It is perhaps no coincidence that The Banshees of Inisherin, the fourth feature film written and directed by Martin McDonagh, is also his best. His first three films were not set in Ireland, except for...
View ArticleOeuvre: Scorsese: Goodfellas
A constant presence on all kinds of Best Film lists, Goodfellas represents a high-water mark for Martin Scorsese’s reputation as a visual stylist of the dark sides of the Italian-American experience. A...
View ArticleSomething in the Dirt
Something in the Dirt is the latest feature film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (best known for Spring and The Endless), and it may be their best yet. In addition to writing and directing, the...
View ArticleCauseway
Most cinematic two-handers are built around unusual circumstances. Think of Before Sunrise or The Lighthouse, films where the two leads bond over an extraordinary setting. Causeway, the new film...
View ArticleRediscover: The Ninth Configuration
The late William Peter Blatty, famed author of The Exorcist, only directed two misunderstood films in his decades-spanning career. The most well-known, yet still underrated, of the two is The Exorcist...
View ArticleNext Exit
For some, it’s a welcome solace. For others, it’s a heinous burden. But for the protagonists of Mali Elfman’s feature directorial debut, it’s a promise. To know the date, the time, even the means of...
View ArticleMeet Me in the Bathroom
The entire point of Meet Me in the Bathroom is to mythologize a particular wave of indie rock that swept the music scene in the early 2000s. Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s documentary...
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