The Marvels
Last year, in anticipation of the release of the 28th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the talking head in Regal Cinemas’ pre-trailer ad block Noovie...
View ArticleIt’s a Wonderful Knife
Nearly 50 years after Bob Clark decided to set one of the very first slasher films during the holiday season with 1974’s Black Christmas, Tyler MacIntyre’s It’s a Wonderful Knife slices its way into...
View ArticleDream Scenario
There is likely no actor more attuned, both intentionally and unintentionally, to the wider cultural zeitgeist than Nicolas Cage – which is why it’s hilarious to see one of Hollywood’s most distinctive...
View ArticleRevisit: Safe
Todd Haynes is a filmmaker who uses subversion to draw out the most intriguing details of his subject matter. Whether it’s using Barbie dolls as actors in his debut featurette, Superstar: The Karen...
View ArticleYour Lucky Day
Nothing elevates the stakes in a heist movie quite like a hostage situation. It’s part of the reason movies like Dog Day Afternoon and Die Hard have become such classics. Human lives are always...
View ArticleThe Dirty South
Genre is typically the first way we describe a film and usually it’s the most effective. But some movies, whether they blend genres or veer away from traditional paradigms, are more effectively...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Terrifier 2
Damien Leone’s Terrifier (2016) admirably stretched a shoestring budget of $35,000 to create a throwback grindhouse aesthetic with viciously gory practical effects. Its villain, a silent mime-like...
View ArticleOrlando, My Political Biography
To its credit, Orlando, My Political Biography barely registers as more than a sociopolitical statement. Indeed, it’s more like a sentence, expanded a thousand times over, than even the word...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Tanner ‘88
Before Bob Roberts and long before Veep, Robert Altman’s Tanner ‘88 was the definitive satire of modern Washington politicking and the soul-sickening, ever-lengthening presidential campaign seasons....
View ArticleNext Goal Wins
Michael Fassbender is having an interesting year. On one end, we have David Fincher’s The Killer, a taut and paranoid thriller that spends most of its time inside the head of Fassbender’s...
View ArticleThanksgiving
What started out as an appetizer has been expanded into a full-course meal—with palatably bloody results. Frequently derided Hostel director Eli Roth originated the idea of Thanksgiving as a trailer in...
View ArticleThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
If you can believe it, it’s been eight long years since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, the final installment of Lionsgate’s star-studded tetralogy, largely put an end to the young adult movie...
View ArticleMay December
There seem to be, primarily speaking, two questions at the haunted heart of Todd Haynes’ May December. The first is fairly obvious: How can we, as people in a regularly functioning society, reconcile...
View ArticleSaltburn
Among England’s wealthiest class, there must be nothing more irksome or dangerous than someone who does not know their place. The landed gentry see these people, who enjoy the finer things without...
View ArticleThe Disappearance of Shere Hite
If you are a young woman living in America and you have never heard of Shere Hite, you’re not alone. The American-born radical feminist who became famous in the ‘70s for her controversial views and...
View ArticleFallen Leaves
Minimalist yet stylistically recognizable, unsparing but sentimental, the oeuvre of meticulous Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki is so distinct in both technique and tone that he practically makes up his...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Vincent & Theo
Crucially, as the title suggests, Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo is not merely a portrait of Vincent van Gogh that happens to feature the painter’s brother (the other man in the title, of course),...
View ArticleNapoleon
Director Ridley Scott’s 28th feature film, Napoleon, is actually two movies at once. Battlefield scenes of intense violence and gore trade places with drawing room moments of verbal jousting and...
View ArticleMaestro
In telling the story of renowned conductor-composer-polymath Leonard Bernstein, director, co-writer and star Bradley Cooper improves upon if not reimagines the biopic formula. Maestro focuses on the...
View ArticleMonster
With his recent films like Broker, Shoplifters, Our Little Sister, and Like Father Like Son, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has cemented himself as one of this era’s finest directors of achingly...
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