Blueback
The obvious, underlying message of Blueback – that life within the seas of this planet is precious and currently under the strain of manmade climate change – is an admirable one. It’s laid on thick in...
View ArticleRediscover: Heroes for Sale
Recent depictions of World War I—particularly Sam Mendes’s 1917 and Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front—have obsessively detailed the sheer brutality of trench warfare. Yet, for all their...
View ArticleA Little White Lie
The mistaken identity trope is a popular one in film. The history of cinema is filled with them — While You Were Sleeping, Mrs. Doubtfire, Date Night, The Talented Mr. Ripley, etc. People really get a...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: The Horror of Party Beach
Frequently derided as one of the worst movies ever made, Del Tenney’s 1964 beach blanket send-up gets more hate than it deserves. Yes, it is hindered with distasteful racist stereotypes. Yes, virtually...
View ArticleLa Civil
The trouble for filmmakers tackling topics that many before them have previously addressed isn’t in how to tell their story well, at least no more than it is for any filmmaker. It’s how to convince...
View ArticleOeuvre: Scorsese: Shutter Island
After having finally secured Oscar glory with 2006’s pulpy crime thriller The Departed, director Martin Scorsese turned toward an altogether different type of pulp with his next narrative feature, an...
View ArticleScream VI
The opening kill of a Scream movie always gives us a taste of its distinct meta-commentary and the tone of the rest of the film. In the 1996 original, we were introduced to the horror-film-obsessed...
View ArticleUnicorn Wars
Whatever movie you think you’re about to watch, if that movie is Unicorn Wars, hear this: you thought wrong. Seldom does so gonzo a proposition as this even make it past one’s own lips, never mind past...
View ArticleI Got a Monster
At first, the true crime documentary I Got a Monster seems like the victim of bad timing. Director Kevin Abrams turns his attention to the Gun Trace Task Force, a deeply corrupt unit in the Baltimore...
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Revisit: Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity is the archetype of noir film. The French may claim otherwise, but Billy Wilder’s 1944 movie certainly owns the pedigree. Not only is it based on a novel by James M. Cain, the...
View ArticleThe Magic Flute
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s massively popular and rightfully legendary opera – featuring some of the finest music composed by the man, which is saying something – sort of receives an adaptation with The...
View ArticleUnwelcome
In Jon Wright’s latest creature feature, Unwelcome, the monsters are the lesser of two evils. But unlike Wright’s 2012’s Irish monster flick, Grabbers, which involved townsfolk staying drunk to make...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Lake Mungo
The precipitous rise and fall of found footage horror over the last 24 years since The Blair Witch Project’s release has said a lot about how we interact with the world around us, especially as it...
View ArticleOeuvre: Scorsese: A Letter to Elia
When Elia Kazan was given a lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards in 1999, it was a controversial decision. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese gave the statue to Kazan, who was in his early...
View ArticleInside
One of the final assignments given to freshmen, including this critic, in Spatial Dynamics, or more plainly the “3D” class at Rhode Island School of Design, was to create an “egg tool.” The object the...
View ArticleRodeo
Biker gangs, apparitions from the afterlife and a heist are all a part of the fabric of Lola Quivoron’s Rodeo. The director brings these elements together to tell a familiar story of a woman seeking...
View ArticleMoving On
In 2014, an increasingly popular, increasingly confident little streaming service by the name of Netflix flexed its muscles and its moneybags with a curious punt for a business synonymous with modern,...
View ArticleSupercell
Supercell winds up erring a bit too much on the side of caution. For a while, Anna Elizabeth James and director Herbert James Winterstern’s screenplay takes great care to introduce us to real-seeming,...
View ArticleRevisit: Serial Mom
John Waters, trash purveyor extraordinaire, is an unabashed, full-throated, out-and-proud, screaming-from-the-rafters…bookworm. “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books,” he once...
View ArticlePinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pinball machines seem like a natural for cinema, but outside of, say, the adaptation of Tommy and to a lesser extent maybe Licorice Pizza, the clanging, flipping, plunging devices haven’t been a...
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