Mia Madre
The only real swerve in Mia Madre occurs within its first few minutes. It opens with a line of chanting labor protesters making their way toward a line of riot police and engaging in a brawl. Abruptly,...
View ArticleRevisit: Private Parts
A few Sundays ago the New York Times published a front-page Arts & Leisure profile of Howard Stern wherein the Gray Lady heaped praise on the self-anointed King of All Media. “Mr. Stern [is] one of...
View ArticleComplete Unknown
Complete Unknown would be one of the year’s best short films, had director Joshua Marston not unwisely stretched it out for 90 minutes. It has a single theme, a direct and uncomplicated thesis,...
View ArticleThe Intervention
A group of old friends gets together to broach a serious issue. This is a dramedy subgenre unto itself, and few attempts bring anything remarkably new to the table. That track record doesn’t bode well...
View ArticleFatima
Nothing earth shattering happens in Fatima, but that doesn’t stop it from breaking your heart. The film revolves around three women: Fatima (Soria Zeroual)—a single mother and a Moroccan immigrant to...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Secrets & Lies Turns 20
Mike Leigh may have hit his commercial peak 20 years ago, with his 1996 film Secrets & Lies, but it’s merely one spike in a healthy career. Every few years, the sensitive Brit returns with a new...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: Solaris
The one constant in Steven Soderbergh’s directorial style is his tendency to change that style at the drop of a hat. Prior to his 2002 update of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Soderbergh’s previous four...
View ArticleThe Light Between Oceans
With his third film, The Light Between Oceans, Derek Cianfrance joins the ranks of Fernando Meirelles and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, directors who burst onto the scene with amazing,...
View ArticleYoga Hosers
Directors like to talk about the first time they picked up a camera because they wanted to make the kind of movie they wanted to see when they were a child. Before a screening of Yoga Hosers, director...
View ArticleKlown Forever
Take the concept of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” mix in the men-behaving-badly antics from one of The Hangover sequels and add just a dash of Sacha Baron Cohen gross-out comedy and you’ll get Klown Forever....
View ArticleZoom
Zoom is a creative puzzle box of intertwined narrative strands, a Penrose steps of coincidentally overlapping, seemingly discrete storylines that eventually all get to the same point. The action is...
View ArticleWhite Girl
The title of first-time director Elizabeth Wood’s debut feature refers to both the film’s main character and cocaine. College student Leah (Morgan Saylor) moves to a mostly Hispanic neighborhood in...
View ArticleKickboxer: Vengeance
Reboots are difficult enough to produce, but when you’re trying to recreate the singular magic of an ‘80s Cannon Films classic like Kickboxer, the task is that much harder to execute. It isn’t that the...
View ArticleMax Rose
As schools reopen, leaves change color and Oscar-bait season begins to bloom, every new movie is an object lesson in the logic of prestige. Who gets to make what films, with whom, and with which awards...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Here Comes the Devil
Buried somewhere within the 97-minute runtime of Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s 2012 film Here Comes the Devil are 10 minutes of an excellent horror movie. The problem with the other 87 minutes is not that...
View ArticleThe Academy of Muses
Plato’s Academy was one of the classical era’s principal sanctuaries of education, a refuge in which young scholars could develop their minds under the tutelage of renowned philosophical masters. It...
View ArticleStarving the Beast
The most telling moment in Starving the Beast comes very late in the documentary’s runtime. One of the film’s villains—some Texan tycoon trying to dismantle the University of Texas out of misguided...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: Ocean’s Twelve
Upon release, the sequel Ocean’s Twelve was among director Steven Soderbergh’s most divisive films. Compared to the stylish remake Ocean’s Eleven (2001), a clever and impossibly cool heist movie that...
View ArticleLondon Road
If you go into London Road expecting yet another stark murder mystery in a tight-knit community, which of late have been produced in excess for British television, you will be very surprised. London...
View ArticleOther People
Sometimes a film doesn’t need to be anything more than the sum of its equally solid parts. Other People, the directorial debut of Saturday Night Live writer Chris Kelly, is that kind of film. Its...
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