Holy Hell! Fargo Turns 20
The Coen Brothers have a diverse body of work, 17 films over three decades skirting familiar genres such as westerns and noirs to “artier,” less classifiable offerings like Barton Fink. They are rarely...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Red Eye
Wes Craven was in an interesting place toward the end of his career. As much as he stuck to the horror stuff he knew so well (Scream 3 and 4, Cursed), there are some curious if not entirely successful...
View ArticleWhiskey Tango Foxtrot
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have had a fruitful and decades-long creative relationship, one that stretches back to “SNL” in the late 1990s and includes “30 Rock” (both were executive producers) and...
View ArticleKnight of Cups
Terrence Malick requires a litmus test. If you happen to like oblique narratives, dreamy long takes and ruminating voiceovers, then you’re a match. If life’s big questions and elliptical edits aren’t...
View ArticleCemetery of Splendor
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul had already won two major awards at Cannes by the time Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Golden Palm in 2010. With its compelling title...
View ArticleCreative Control
In the opening minutes of co-writer-director-actor Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control, a character states that philosophy is “on-trend.” Viewer, take note. The film deals with alienation,...
View ArticleThe Waiting Room
Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room is an English and Bosnian language feature set in Toronto, a somber character study of a wholly unfulfilled man and a film that is as much about the struggles of being...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: Life Is Beautiful
In his autobiography, Charlie Chaplin looks back on his 1940 Hitler burlesque The Great Dictator and confesses, “Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: My Soul to Take
It’s a wonder that bad movies don’t disappear. You’d think after getting destroyed by critics and bombing in the box office, they would evaporate, dropped in some endless pit of cinematic irrelevancy....
View Article10 Cloverfield Lane
J.J. Abrams calls 10 Cloverfield Lane a “blood relative” of the 2008 found footage creature feature he produced. That relative turns out to be a crazy uncle ranting about the end of the world. Howard...
View ArticleEye in the Sky
In February of 2016, former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden claimed that drones offer “the most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict.” According to his...
View ArticleHello, My Name is Doris
Is every single woman over the age of 50 doomed to be seen as a crazy cat lady? Judging by Hello, My Name is Doris, the answer is yes. Sally Field gives a valiant performance as Doris, an older woman...
View ArticleRediscover: The Wanderers
There are a host of gang and greaser coming-of-age films, many of which were released in the late ‘70s. That saturation itself may be the reason why Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers still plays second...
View ArticleLolo
If Julie Delpy is one of the most American of French filmmakers, as she is so frequently called, then her sixth film Lolo is her most American of films. An Oedipal story of a son who sabotages his...
View ArticleThe Wave
Disaster flicks, a tradition as old as Hollywood itself, may be more topical today than in years past. As climate change raises the levels of the sea, Mother Earth is fighting back. But there is a fine...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell
Spectrum Culture staff plumb the depths of currently streaming titles for this column, lowering the bar of filmed entertainment as far as it will go. Yet by that diminished standard, this week’s entry...
View ArticleThe Program
A movie about the life of Lance Armstrong was inevitable. Even before his major fall from grace, in which his prolific and unparalleled competitive cycling career was revealed to be the result of a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Scream 4
A decade after the embarrassing tragedy that was Scream 3, Wes Craven teamed back up with original screenwriter Kevin Williamson to deliver the most unique entry into his infamous slasher franchise. It...
View ArticleRemember
Crossing the episodic, unlikely-detective story of Broken Flowers with the contemporary Nazi-hunting oddity of This Must Be the Place, Atom Egoyan’s Remember—much darker than either of those films—is...
View ArticleKrisha
It starts with a face. Fiercely resolute and heavily creased with a shock of silver hair, Krisha stares straight back at us. She announces her presence with a ferocity that isn’t often afforded female...
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