The Vourdalak
Creature design plays an integral role in the effectiveness of monster-based horror. Not only a monster’s appearance, but also the extent of time it should appear on-screen is a crucial consideration....
View ArticleMaXXXine
Ti West, the writer and director of the slasher film MaXXXine, harbors under the delusion that pastiche and self-awareness are inherently compelling. Nothing could be further from the truth: your...
View ArticleBoneyard
In its worst moments, of which it has arguably too many, Boneyard is another one of those movies that seems like it was constructed by putting a lot of generic tropes into a random generator to produce...
View ArticleThe Secret Art of Human Flight
A group of crows is called a murder. A group of ravens: an unkindness. If you find a dead bird, it is a sign of bad things to come, and in some cultures, if a bird flies into your home, you can be...
View ArticleMother, Couch
Despite a frankly incredible cast of talent, Mother, Couch is bland, uninspiring rubbish for 99 percent of its thankfully brief running time. Based upon the Swedish novel Mamma i soffaby Jerker...
View ArticleRevisit: Ordinary People
There was a long, long period where Robert Redford’s Ordinary People was overlooked in film circles. It was the film that defeated Raging Bull for Best Picture, starting off a series in which Martin...
View ArticleThe Nature of Love
The war of snobs versus slobs gets a French-Canadian update in The Nature of Love, a film so light you might miss its shrewd insights into human nature. Monia Chokri, the film’s writer and director,...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Mr. Shosuke Ohara
Long overshadowed by Japanese legends Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Shimizu continues to lurk in relative and undeserved obscurity in the West. Criterion’s...
View ArticleKill
“Sacrifice and principles my ass!” That’s the level of discourse among bloodthirsty bandits in Kill, whose simple title barely hints at the almost tangible bloodlust its characters and balletic battle...
View ArticleLonglegs
As genre-based studios, such as horror factory Blumhouse, seemingly double down on exhuming the decrepit corpses of beloved classics for their corporate IP, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a film...
View ArticleOeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson’s characters often present as what The Master’s charlatan leader Lancaster Dodd would describe as “aberrated.” The flawed, hedonistic chosen family at the heart of Boogie Nights...
View ArticleSing Sing
In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, Ruth Whippman wrote that America is suffering from an under-the-radar male mental health crisis. Not only is there a paucity of instruction for boys and...
View ArticleThe Convert
The New Zealand director Lee Tamahori returns to his roots with The Convert, a confused historical thriller. Tamahori got international attention with Once Were Warriors, a film about modern domestic...
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Revisit: Perfect Days
How do you find happiness in your work? No job, no matter how fulfilling or exciting, is immune from the tedium of routine or bureaucracy. That is the initial draw to Perfect Days, the most recent film...
View ArticleDandelion
You cannot fake authenticity. If a performance seems insincere or fake, an audience can tell almost immediately. This is the fundamental miscalculation in Dandelion, a contemporary drama that has...
View ArticleMade in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger
A documentarian takes a great risk selecting a personality bigger than their subject to narrate their film, and in the world of cinema there are few personalities bigger than Martin Scorsese. However,...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Maximum Overdrive
Dysart’s Travel Stop is a bustling highway haven just outside Bangor, Maine. Beyond boasting a truly stunning variety of reposing big rigs and a great slice of blueberry pie, Dysart’s low-key claim to...
View ArticleOeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: Inherent Vice
The source material for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice just might make it his most ambitious film. It is based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, the reclusive postmodernist known for books that...
View ArticleTwisters
One of the more humorous aspects of Twisters, a very silly movie in what is now apparently a very silly franchise, is the relationship between its title and that of its predecessor, the 1996 cornpone...
View ArticleOddity
A mental patient knocks at the front door of a remote estate in the dead of night, requesting entry because he claims that, moments before, he spotted an intruder enter the home. Such a scenario faces...
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