Dreamin’ Wild
Thanks to a seemingly non-existent publicity machine, the only moviegoers aware of Bill Pohlad’s terrific real-life drama Dreamin’ Wild may come down to a fairly narrow demographic: fans of Donnie and...
View ArticleOur Body
Claire Simon’s prismatic, endlessly captivating portrait of the daily workings of a French Hospital, Our Body, focuses almost exclusively on the wings dedicated to women’s health. Simon’s previous...
View ArticleMen of Deeds
Men of Deeds, the new dark comedy from Romanian filmmaker Paul Negoescu, has a familiar structure. It follows a police officer in a small town who slowly uncovers deep, pervasive layers of corruption....
View ArticleBrother
Over 30 years ago, John Singleton’s directorial debut Boyz n the Hood successfully examined the plight of urban survival. The spiritual successor to slice of life films from the late 70’s and early...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: Boyhood
The minute Coldplay’s Yellow starts playing during the opening credits of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, we should have known this movie was going to suck. What other song so perfectly captures that...
View ArticleThe Last Voyage of the Demeter
There’s a widely-referenced moment in F.W. Murnau’s silent horror classic Nosferatu (1922), where a terrified sailor ventures below deck to find that coffins situated in the schooner’s cargo have...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Nashville (1975)
An interesting detail in Joan Tewkesbury’s screenplay for Nashville is that the events unfolding over the course of five days for 24 major characters are happening against the backdrop of the 1976...
View ArticleMedusa Deluxe
From the very start, Medusa Deluxe’s opening scene throws you right into the action. Cleve (Clare Perkins), a talented hairdresser, is in the middle of a rant about the shocking discovery of another...
View ArticleJules
Jules is the tale of Milton (Ben Kingsley), an elderly widower living in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. He faithfully attends his town hall meetings, and he steadfastly commits to his agenda of...
View ArticleRediscover: Stage Fright
A generic title like Stage Fright may not be enticing to anyone browsing Prime listings for some off-the-wall curio to watch on a Sunday night. But consider that the Italian release title was the...
View ArticleKing on Screen
King on Screen is a fan flick. More so, it is a nostalgic fanboy flick sprinkled with notable horror icon Stephen King collaborators that meanders until the end credits and leaves you wondering, “just...
View ArticleThe Pod Generation
The Pod Generation takes place in a near future where all human experiences are commodified and mediated by technology. Instead of taking a break from work by stepping outside to get some fresh air,...
View ArticleBetween Two Worlds
The story told in the nonfiction book on which Between Two Worlds is based may have looked quite different on the big screen in the immediate aftermath of the book’s release. That was in the wake of...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Touching the Void Turns 20
We typically think that documentaries only have the capacity to inform or entertain. Sometimes they can horrify, like when a filmmaker depicts genocide or other atrocities. But in the breadth of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History
Amid other notable instances of inter-genre experimentation, the 1970s was a decade of neo-Westerns, a fitting trend for a period defined by the collision of new stylistic trends with a stubborn...
View ArticleLandscape with Invisible Hand
Sometimes, the increasing relevance granted to a particular artwork can outrun the work itself. When Cory Finley (Bad Education, Thoroughbreds), the New York-based filmmaker and playwright behind...
View ArticleStrays
Josh Greenbaum, the director of Strays, probably had a VHS copy of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey when he was a kid. For the uninitiated, it was a family-friendly film about three pets, two...
View ArticleBirth/Rebirth
Returning from the dead occupies a curious position within human storytelling, with resurrection seen as divine on the one hand and reanimation as sin against nature on the other. Within cinema,...
View ArticleThe Adults
Most often when faced with an idiosyncratic drama starring someone like Michael Cera, you’re going to get romance. That’s why director Dustin Guy Defa’s latest film, The Adults, is such a breath of...
View ArticleDead Shot
That punchy title and gun-heavy poster might push the uninitiated to write off Dead Shot as a direct-to-video shoot-em-up, although the presence of reliable stars like Mark Strong and Felicity Jones...
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