Before Dawn
Before Dawn is a slow trudge through the horrors of war. In some respects, this makes sense. The film follows a handful of young soldiers from Australia sent to fight on the Western Front, believing...
View ArticleRevisit: American Movie
If you approached your first viewing of American Movie with no prior knowledge of the film, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a mockumentary. The cult documentary’s subject, Milwaukee-based...
View ArticleCrossing
In 2013, Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park erupted into large-scale protest as demonstrations against proposed gentrification efforts escalated, following a police crackdown, into a full-blown uprising...
View ArticleCrumb Catcher
There’s something about home invasion movies that easily make them some of the scariest films in the horror genre. Perhaps this is because instead of relying on murderous monsters or vengeful ghosts,...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Shaun of the Dead Turns 20
George A. Romero’s groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead not only defined the modern zombie archetype but possessed a subtext that alluded to the televised horrors of the Vietnam War and racial...
View ArticleDeadpool & Wolverine
Last year’s horror-comedy slasher Thanksgiving both parodied and embodied the genre. Though it was a fun watch, one could argue that simply being self-aware about the tropes you parody doesn’t give you...
View ArticleThe Fabulous Four
Raunchy girls trip movies have been stretched to every niche, sometimes delivering fun viewing experiences that don’t always take themselves too seriously. But a thin line exists between light-hearted...
View ArticleDìdi
One of the funny things about getting older is that you eventually get to witness the times you grew up in become the subject of a nostalgic coming-of-age film by a promising, young filmmaker. Its...
View ArticleOeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: Phantom Thread
Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 masterwork Phantom Thread gleams with the meticulous craftsmanship of the fashion world it portrays. Set in the 1950s London fashion scene, it stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the...
View ArticleThe Last Breath
A colleague of mine has always maintained something crucial and smart about digital visual effects in the movies: It doesn’t entirely matter whether some computer creation is realistic, if it is...
View ArticleStarve Acre
Britain and folk horror: it’s as arguably as iconic a pairing as Italy and splattery nightmare-logic terror. From the early ‘70s foundations like Robin Redbreast, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The...
View ArticleRevisit: Hackers
The promise of the unknown embedded within the cutting edge of technology will inevitably lead filmmakers to explore what that technology is capable of. Just look at two of the greatest space-age films...
View ArticleThe Arctic Convoy
The Arctic Convoy is a throwback to World War II films popular when the conflict was still in progress that were designed to get audiences more invested in the war effort with their modestly scaled...
View ArticleOnly the River Flows
After being selected in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Only the River Flows became an arthouse hit in China. Although a surprise at the time, it’s not difficult to see...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: Death in Venice
Directed with wistful melancholy, Death in Venice wants us to sympathize with a snobby pervert. But unlike Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, the most successful attempt at humanizing this particular kind of...
View ArticleMountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa
In 1993, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa became the first Nepali woman to summit Mount Everest. After three failed attempts at reaching the top of one of the world’s most dangerous mountains, she finally made it....
View ArticleKneecap
In the foreground of Kneecap, there is the story of some musical underdogs, who band together to form the hip-hop group of the title. This story is told with a sense of relative familiarity, as the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: Licorice Pizza
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is made up of complicated and interesting characters, but at times, the film can be off putting to watch—though this discomfort is cloaked almost too well in a...
View ArticleDetained
There is such a devious sense of uncertainty at the start of Detained that it’s a shame co-writer/director Felipe Mucci’s film turns out to be as patently ridiculous as it is. Movies this ridiculous,...
View ArticleThe Instigators
Casey Affleck is a fine comic actor, and maybe the funniest thing he has ever done was this Dunkin Donuts Commercial when he hosted Saturday Night Live. In less than two minutes, Affleck packs a lot of...
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