Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
During their stint on “Saturday Night Live,” comedians Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone—known collectively as the Lonely Island—helped usher in a new era of comedy. “Viral video” was...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Breaking the Waves Turns 20
Nymphomaniac‘s Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is a sex addict who falls victim to the one thing she had sought to avoid: love. Comparing her libidinous story with that of Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) in...
View ArticleThe President
Set in an unidentified country where a nameless military dictator rules with an iron fist, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The The President is possessed with the distinct air of fairy-tale obliqueness that feels...
View ArticleApproaching the Unknown
Elon Musk just announced that his company SpaceX will launch a manned mission to Mars by 2024. What was once the stuff of science fiction fantasy is rapidly becoming reality. How many more films like...
View ArticleThe Fits
As much as I want to climb the nearest rooftop to shout its praises, I’d rather watch The Fits for a fourth time. It’s a beautiful movie, no doubt, but it’s also brief. That it’s closer in length to an...
View ArticleThe Witness
The Witness is a remarkably compassionate addition to the increasingly popular true crime genre. The documentary takes on a story which is, as the film’s narrator puts it, “geometric.” But director...
View ArticleHoneyglue
The cinematic equation of young lovers plus terminal cancer equals greenlighted film has not yet run its course. While audiences may be getting tired of watching beautiful young people find love and...
View ArticleIt’s So Easy and Other Lies
Few narratives recur as frequently as the rise and fall of a rock star. When juxtaposed against the sum total value of an artist’s contributions to music, the winding road of excesses can be a...
View ArticleGurukulam
Gurukulam is a collaborative documentary, the work of co-directors Jillian Elizabeth and Neil Dalal. Its subject is the quotidian sights and sounds of an ashram in rural Tamil Nadu, India where...
View ArticleOut of Print
Believe it or not, some people really love their jobs. Julia Marchese is one of those people. By her own account, she fell in love with L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema the first time she walked through its...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Unknown Island
Ah, the South Pacific! Where time stands still and World War II veteran turned adventurer Ted Osbourne (Phillip Reed) flew over a remote island and took a photograph of what looks just like a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: sex, lies, and videotape
Any film that takes sex and the fundamentals of modern romance seriously is bound to raise some unanswerable questions. For example, should we never take advice from someone we haven’t had sex with?...
View ArticleWarcraft
The greatest and most involving conflict in Warcraft is the attempt to figure out who, exactly, the film is for. Optioned a full decade ago and in proper development for four years, the adaptation of...
View ArticleThe Conjuring 2
Three years ago, The Conjuring spooked audiences and won critical acclaim despite essentially being The Exorcist meets Poltergeist in Amityville. Director James Wan unapologetically repurposed haunted...
View ArticleLast Cab to Darwin
Typically, when stage plays are poorly adapted to film, the major criticisms focus on a lack of movement, a stilted atmosphere reflecting a production that didn’t know how to open itself up to the...
View ArticleDe Palma
In De Palma, directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow succeed in canonizing the eponymous auteur through sheer force of will. This is no real game changer of personal taste. If you’ve never liked De...
View ArticleDiary of a Chambermaid
Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Diary of a Chambermaid has now been filmed four times, most notably via mirroring projects by two of the 20th century’s greatest auteurs. The first of these, directed in...
View ArticleTherapy for a Vampire
A vampire’s life is a difficult one, between blood drinking and the night-owl hours, after a few centuries there’s little left to surprise. It’s the same with the vampire movie. After all the Draculas,...
View ArticleHoly Hell! A Summer’s Tale Turns 20
Eric Rohmer’s 1996 film A Summer’s Tale begins much the same way that the director’s 1983 holiday film Pauline at the Beach did. We see Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) arriving in Dinard, a town on the...
View ArticleTikkun
The most immediately notable element of Tikkun, Israeli filmmaker Avishai Sivan’s third film, is that the camera doesn’t move. Aside from a few Hitchcock zooms it remains almost entirely fixed. The...
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