Flamin’ Hot
These days, if you go to any gas station, vending machine or local supermarket, you are pretty much guaranteed to find bags of Frito-Lay’s extremely popular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. The iconic extruded...
View ArticleThe Blackening
What does it mean to be the “Blackest”? Does it have to do with the pigment of your skin, or something deeper? That question is central to The Blackening, the new film directed and co-written by Tim...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: M*A*S*H*
Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H* released in 1970, the same year as Mike Nichols’ Catch-22. Both filmmakers were seen as part of “New Hollywood,” an evolution from the Golden Age that took a more...
View ArticleElemental
Pixar Studios found a sweet spot in 1995 with Toy Story, perfecting the formula for appealing to children as well as adults. Their computer-animated productions took absurd premises—sentient...
View ArticleThe Flash
The phenomenon of Dueling Movies – two films, with similar premises, released in quick succession – is hardly new. The practice goes back to Hollywood’s Golden Age, with the 1934 films The Rise of...
View ArticlePretty Red Dress
Pretty Red Dress has a lot of good going for it. Director Dionne Edwards’ captivating family drama is an expertly shot and skillfully acted piece of work. The story centers on a young couple and their...
View ArticleMaggie Moore(s)
The opening scene of Maggie Moore(s) — John Slattery’s latest — sets the tone for a gritty cat-and-mouse chase between Police Chief Sanders (Jon Hamm) and an unmasked killer (Happy Anderson). The music...
View ArticleLonely Castle in the Mirror
Lonely Castle in the Mirror is the latest offering from the prolific GKIDS animation distribution machine. It joins a rapidly expanding library of imports that has taken the medium from its...
View ArticleHapper’s Comet
Upon one’s first viewing, it does seem difficult to know where to begin with Happer’s Comet, the feature debut from director/editor Tyler Taormina. Filmed on Long Island in the early days of the...
View ArticleRediscover: Stolen Desire
Shōhei Imamura worked for a few years under the tutelage of Yasujirō Ozu, but one won’t find many similarities between the two filmmakers’ works. When Imamura emerged in his own right with Stolen...
View ArticleExtraction 2
Plane, Pathaan, The Roundup: No Way Out, Kill Boksoon, John Wick: Chapter 4, upcoming thrills big and small from Tom Cruise’s next superspy stunt spectacular to William Kaufman’s latest tactical crime...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Vibrations
What if you crossed a Warner Bros. social problem film with Douglas Sirkian melodrama, and wrapped it all up in a rave concert movie? That’s the improbable taste profile of the strangely ridiculous and...
View ArticleMake Me Famous
You probably haven’t heard of painter Edward Brezinski, a fixture in the New York art scene in the storied ‘80s. More than one of the interview subjects in the documentary Make Me Famous calls...
View ArticleGod Is a Bullet
It may seem a bit odd at first glance for the director of The Notebook to be behind a gritty cop-vs-cult thriller. But then again Nick Cassavetes did also make 2006’s bleak kidnapping crime drama Alpha...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Brewster McCloud
In 1968, Robert Altman had a movie taken away from him in post-production, after committing the grievous sin of being a rookie director spicing up a staid space program drama with a little too much...
View ArticleNo Hard Feelings
No Hard Feelings, the new sex comedy from director and co-writer Gene Stupnitsky, shrewdly combines two strains of generational angst. Its protagonist is a classic millennial, paralyzed by indecision...
View ArticleAsteroid City
The Wes Anderson archetype of the loquacious depressive has reached its definitive incarnation in his 11th feature, Asteroid City. Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck is a photographer grieving the...
View ArticleLoren & Rose
There is one thing abundantly clear before the end credits of Russell Brown’s feathery gabfest: international superstar Jaqueline Bisset maintains a voracious ability to command and carry an otherwise...
View ArticleDesperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy
There should be a permanent moratorium on documentaries like Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy. Instead of burrowing deep into John Schlesinger’s Best Picture winner, the...
View ArticleHere. Is. Better.
Here. Is. Better. opens with U.S. Veteran and Politician Jason Kander revisiting a baseball field where he once played as a kid. The imagery is a curiosity, until Kander admits that he used the memory...
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