The Channel
For nearly 20 years, director William Kaufman has been marrying direct-to-video meat and potatoes with tactical gunplay authenticity and a hardboiled mean streak. His debut, The Prodigy, answered the...
View ArticleRediscover: Cousin Jules
With arthouse cinemas in the early 1970s unequipped to handle multi-track stereo sound, Dominique Benicheti’s documentary Cousin Jules lingered in relative obscurity for four decades before its...
View ArticleThe Flood
A storm-swept setting, raging hurricane floods and hungry alligators roaming confined halls: no, that’s not a description of Alexandre Aja’s lean, mean genre hybrid Crawl, although one might wish it...
View ArticleAfire
Writer-director Christian Petzold likes to keep viewers off-balance; he set his 2018 drama Transit in what seemed to be Nazi-era Germany but was in fact the present day. So if his latest film, Afire,...
View ArticleCriminally underrated: Breach
Robert Hanssen was always going to be found dead in his cell. In 2002, he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole. Until his death this...
View Article20 Days in Mariupol
In 20 Days in Mariupol, the viewer is shoved into a front row seat to witness the pain and devastation experienced during the first days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Associated Press videographer and...
View ArticleTheater Camp
Not only does Theater Camp have a shaggy dog charm, it also makes you feel kind of bad for disliking it. The characters are well-meaning and earnest, while all the gentle mockery comes from a place of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman often referred to his version of Raymond Chandler’s illustrious gumshoe in The Long Goodbye as Rip van Marlowe. Indeed, within minutes, it’s clear that Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is a...
View ArticleOppenheimer
There’s a moment early on in Oppenheimer when a buttonhole is stitched in the narrative fabric as the titular scientist shares a private moment with a figure we recognize as Albert Einstein. Filmed...
View ArticleBarbie
With Barbie, Greta Gerwig renders a feature-length toy commercial about as cheeky, subversive and interrogative as it can be. The movie is still rife with product placement — including, oddly, for...
View ArticleMother, May I?
Not a lot happens in Mother, May I?, but screenwriter Laurence Vannicelli (also making his feature directorial debut) would very much like us to think that it’s saying a lot about the central...
View ArticleStephen Curry: Underrated
The best sports documentaries bring context to their subjects’ stories. They offer insight into the how and why, something that the typical sports narrative rarely reveals. Watching stars on our...
View ArticleRevisit: Who’ll Stop the Rain
From The Deer Hunter and Rolling Thunder’s hook handed vengeance, to Taxi Driver’s powder keg madness and Deathdream’s walking dead, the ‘70s were rife with films of Vietnam veterans returning home as...
View ArticleCobweb
Within minutes of the title card, knocking and whispers in the walls are plaguing young Peter despite his parents’ promises that it’s merely the creaks and critters of an old house. Cobweb wears its...
View ArticleThe Beanie Bubble
The biopic genre has been mounting an alarming resurgence within the past few years. We have been inundated with cinematic “based on a true story” tales across the platforms that range from the dawn of...
View ArticleReturn to Dust
Creating films of a political nature under government censorship is a herculean task. In essence, filmmakers must portray their subjects cogently enough to make any meaning apparent to a wider...
View ArticleTopology of Sirens
What if Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s next project constructed a mystery around your local experimental music festival? Writer-director Jonathan Davies achieves just that with Topology of Sirens. Lushly...
View ArticleFear the Night
What happened to Neil LaBute? In the ’90s and early ’00s, he was a darling of the indie film world. His debut feature In the Company of Men remains a provocative exploration of misogyny, and other...
View ArticleHoly Hell: Shattered Glass Turns 20
Exposed and almost completely discredited as a fraud – Stephen Glass’s contentious tenure at The New Republic remains one of the most widely publicized controversies in the history of journalism. From...
View ArticleThe First Slam Dunk
Very rarely does a film find the perfect balance of action and pathos. It is a marvel to see a piece of work that appropriately mixes the summation of its ingredients exactly right, allowing the viewer...
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