Sunset Song
Terence Davies is perhaps the greatest contemporary director of interiors, capable of extracting from his predominantly working-class settings intense feelings of economic and emotional repression....
View ArticleNeighbors 2: Sorority Rising
Girls just wanna have fun, or at least, the ones in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising do. The sequel to 2014’s hit Neighbors switches focus from hard-partying frat bros to hard-partying sorority sisters,...
View ArticleThe Nice Guys
Back before his comeback hit full swing, Shane Black was simultaneously developing two screenplays to be his directorial debut. The first was a metafictional send-up of film noir that recast Black’s...
View ArticleOeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar-wai is such an engrossing filmmaker that even his failures are endlessly fascinating. My Blueberry Nights, his sole English language feature, is unquestionably the worst film he’s ever made....
View ArticleMaggie’s Plan
Love her or hate her, Greta Gerwig is here to stay. Falling somewhere between Lena Dunham and Miranda July, her brand of klutzy, self-questioning charm makes for a mostly endearing screen presence. In...
View ArticleWeiner
It would not appear to be a difficult feat to make an entertaining documentary about a man who is famous for a high profile political sex scandal and who happens to have a last name that is also a...
View ArticleRevisit: The Saint
In the pantheon of failed leading men, few movie stars get as bad a rap as Val Kilmer. From the brilliant comedic turns of his youth in films like Real Genius to his later, robust character actor work...
View ArticleManhattan Night
Brian DeCubellis’ feature debut, Manhattan Night, is a run-of-the-mill noir with a handful of well-executed Steadicam long takes and a troubling volume of issues regarding plot and intent. Ultimately,...
View ArticleHard Sell
First-time writer/director Sean Nalaboff’s Hard Sell advertises itself as a bawdy coming-of-age teen comedy. Yet while it ticks most of that genre’s requisite boxes, it’s much more concerned with its...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: Drive
Film is obviously a visual medium. How a film looks can often be more important than what it’s about. But where do we draw the line between style and substance? When is impeccable cinematography enough...
View ArticleOeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: The Grandmaster
A new Wong Kar-wai film is always a cause for excitement, but the director’s most recently released film, the sweeping wuxia The Grandmaster, carried with it a somewhat heightened sense of...
View ArticleX-Men: Apocalypse
Now that Sony and Marvel have brokered a deal to bring your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man into the MCU, having cameoed extraneously in Captain America: Civil War, there’s uproarious fan clamoring...
View ArticlePresenting Princess Shaw
Rumor has it that Bradley Cooper will soon be making his directorial debut on the third big-screen remake of William A. Wellman’s A Star is Born. Someone needs to call Mr. Cooper and tell him that he...
View ArticleHoly Hell
Decades have passed since the large-scale cults of Jonestown, Waco and Heaven’s Gate—and the deaths that surrounded them—dominated the airwaves. In that time, cults have become shadowier and even more...
View ArticleAustralia’s Lost Gold
Investigative documentaries follow a fairly predictable structure. Interviews with important players and, frequently, wholly unrelated characters whose knowledge of events is negligible form the...
View ArticleThe Ones Below
The Ones Below is a quick and easy psychodrama that’s as much about the trials and tribulations of apartment life as it is the interpersonal conspiracy that unfolds under the roof of a posh...
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Rediscover: A Special Day
Despite his voluminous output as both a director and a screenwriter, Ettore Scola (who passed in January at the age of 84) isn’t usually mentioned as one of the great Italian filmmakers. Initially...
View ArticleAs I AM
Lately, it seems as though each month another film is released that chronicles the life of a musician who suffered from substance abuse and died young. There have been biopics on Miles Davis and Hank...
View ArticleChevalier
Chevalier handles the world of competitive Western masculinity with a gentle touch. It sets strict limits on this potentially vast subject, building a narrative that is allegorical, if somewhat...
View ArticleMe Before You
Beauty and the Beast is a tale as old as time: a benevolent woman nurtures a physically and/or emotionally challenged man back to his former self. Me Before You adopts this cozy setup, chucking the...
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