Criminally Underrated: The Faculty
In 1998, the box-office zeitgeist tended toward extraterrestrial threats, forced conformity and bugs. That summer, Deep Impact and Armageddon concurrently depicted scrambles to avoid mass extinction...
View ArticleRebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire
There’s no joy to be found in hating a director’s entire body of work. On a long enough timeline and with strong enough scripts, any director can find their niche and produce a good film or two. This...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear)
Prêt-à-Porter, Robert Altman’s 1994 satirical take on the fashion industry, should’ve and could’ve been another sparkling ensemble showcase from the director of Nashville, HealtH and The Player. At...
View ArticleThe Book of Clarence
In the decades since the release of Monty Python’s 1979 religious satire, The Life of Brian, members of the celebrated comedy troupe have contended that the film – arguably their best – was never meant...
View ArticleMean Girls
Comedy is a hothouse flower and a fickle kind of magic, perfected by those who make it look easy, even though it’s anything but. For it to work, it has to feel special, organic, weightless. If you try...
View ArticleRediscover: Mulholland Falls
It is tempting to call the 1990s a golden age of neo-noir, but the subgenre has never really gone away. The framework of it – detectives, dames, scandals, murder – is too reliable, an easy way for...
View ArticleLift
We have seen heist-centered action/thriller hybrids like Lift before. Indeed, we have even previously seen them from director F. Gary Gray, a veteran of this particular subgenre and of big,...
View ArticleThe Settlers
The Settlers is an angry film, one that confronts violence and its role in determining who gets to write a nation’s history. In that sense, it has thematic similarities to Killers of the Flower Moon,...
View ArticleThe Night They Came Home
Where does one even begin with The Night They Came Home? Might the starting point be the strange framing device in which Danny Trejo plays a grizzled old man dictating the film’s narrative to two...
View ArticleT.I.M.
With the exponential proliferation of smart devices and artificial intelligence, there’s an incisive story to tell about the ominous possibilities of relying too comprehensively on A.I. in our...
View ArticleLast Things
During a Q&A from October at the Viennale International Film Festival, the Illinois-based experimental filmmaker Deborah Stratman made a telling remark: “A film, for me, is successful if I can’t...
View ArticleHoly Hell! The Machinist Turns 20
Even by the most extreme standards, few actors have risked their physical health as much as Christian Bale did between the productions of The Machinist (2004) and Batman Begins (2005). At a dangerously...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Kansas City
Like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the gangster film Kansas City shows how Robert Altman had a subversive streak. Sure, this film includes scenery-chewing crooks and complex betrayals, but there is a...
View ArticleI.S.S.
Relations between Russia and the United States are bad right now, the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War. In the twentieth century, Soviet Russia was a reliable source for bad guys in...
View ArticleFounders Day
The Room (2003) was a “so bad, it’s good” B-movie turned beloved cult-classic. It’s the quintessential example of a film people love to make fun of, which is why it’s remained in the zeitgeist for two...
View ArticleInside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
At the beginning of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, three men witness a devastating motorcycle crash, to which they react with varying degrees of shock and indifference. This isn’t a spoiler. In fact,...
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Revisit: The Seventh Seal
Martin Scorsese has Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. John Cassavetes had Gena Rowlands. And Ingmar Bergman had Gunnar Björnstrand. Though the famed Swedish director – who directed more than 60...
View ArticleThe Breaking Ice
Yanji, a wintry city in northeastern China, is close to the North Korean border. Tourism is popular here amongst the Chinese looking to experience Korean culture and take in the nearby mountains. It is...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: My Son John
The Red Scare Era of Hollywood is typically discussed in conjunction with the town’s entanglement with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and the ensuing blacklist that grew larger as...
View ArticlePasang: In the Shadow of Everest
There are two distinct paths to take if you want to summit Mount Everest. The mountain can be scaled from the north out of Tibet, but most people looking to stand on top of the world prefer to begin...
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