The Little Death
As we shift between five neighboring Sydney couples in The Little Death, cutesy title cards pop up conveniently providing the dictionary definitions of their various sexual fetishes. I suppose you...
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Revisit: The Night Porter
The Holocaust has been a fecund pool for filmmakers, a quagmire of the horrific from which cinematic scenarios gallant and exploitative have emerged. For every noble work such as Shoah or Au Revoir Les...
View ArticleInto the Grizzly Maze
Partially inspired by the exploits of Timothy Treadwell, the renegade environmentalist and grizzly bear fanatic who died at the hands of the same animals he sought to protect, Into the Grizzly Maze is...
View ArticleIn Stereo
In Stereo has a good soul-inflected soundtrack with quality acts like The Budos Band and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. The film is, for the most part, well-photographed. The title font design is...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Hercules vs. Hydra
There are certain Wikipedia articles which, even within the limited confines of a computer screen, have the power to make their readers feel instantly, infinitesimally insignificant. Take the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Nosferatu the Vampyre
Remaking an iconic silent film 55 years after its release (and subsequent near-destruction) takes a certain level of madness. Thankfully, any project pairing Werner Herzog and the late Klaus Kinski...
View ArticleMinions
In Despicable Me (2010) and Despicable Me 2 (2013) the cute, little, yellow minions completely stole the show and created a marketing juggernaut for Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment....
View ArticleAmy
When one of the most talented singers of the 21st century dies at 27, it’s normal to want to point fingers. There was her father, absent in childhood and later exploitative of her fame. There was her...
View ArticleWhat We Did On Our Holiday
What We Did On Our Holiday is deceptively deep. It looks, for all money, like a light comedy about dreaded family gatherings. Soon-to-be-divorced couple Doug (David Tennant) and Abi (Rosamund Pike)...
View Article10,000km
The distance between Barcelona and Los Angeles is 10,000km. That’s also the distance between Alex and Sergi (Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer), a good-looking couple forced to endure the curse of...
View ArticleBoulevard
The strongest impression Robin Williams gives in his final screen performance, in Dito Montiel’s new film Boulevard, is of a complete lack of vanity. One of America’s most beloved entertainers, whose...
View ArticleRediscover: Good Vibrations
Spectrum Culture’s recent feature on the best biopics of the last 20 years was missing one of my favorites, simply because nobody else knew what it was. Readers may be forgiven for thinking that this...
View ArticleStrangerland
Being that Hugo Weaving is one of the most under-appreciated actors of his generation, I had high hopes for Strangerland. It’s been a while since Weaving last played in a hit film, and with Nicole...
View ArticleTangerine
Tangerine begins at a breathless pace it maintains for the rest of its running time. “Merry Christmas to you, bitch,” a voice calls out as a donut is slid into view in a close-up of a diner table where...
View ArticleStations of the Cross
Even in today’s increasingly secular world, where the steady promise of technology continues to decrease reliance on the fickle will of God, there’s no shortage of crimes committed in the name of some...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Hackers Turns 20
Computer technology continues to advance so rapidly that those old dinosaur desktops now seem like relics of a long-gone past. In the same vein, all those ’80s and ’90s films about computer culture...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Woyzeck
Woyzeck is the only Werner Herzog film that takes viewers through the seven stages of stabbing your mistress. Judging by the harrowing experience of Franz Woyzeck, the film’s protagonist, they are (in...
View ArticleTrainwreck
By this point in his career, it is easy to recognize the formula Judd Apatow employs in his filmmaking. He has been making the same romantic comedy for years now: a pair of losers eventually gets past...
View ArticleAnt-Man
When Marvel Studios launched their Cinematic Universe with Iron Man (2008), the film and the universe concept were both considered a risk. Obviously the gamble paid off, as every Marvel movie since has...
View ArticleThe Look of Silence
The Look of Silence is the scariest movie of the year. There aren’t any ghosts in it, and there’s no visible bloodshed, but there are monsters. They’re just not the monsters we’re used to seeing. They...
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