London Town
When asked what intrigued him about London Town, director Derek Borte said he wanted to direct a picture about a kid discovering The Clash. At its heart, London Town is a fairly stock coming-of-age...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Revisit: Bicycle Thieves
Is there a moment more revealing, or even heartbreaking, in our lives than when we realize our parents are human? As children we look up to our mothers and fathers as people without flaws, fears or...
View ArticleTheo Who Lived
Theo Who Lived is a discreet victory for humanism, an 86-minute thaw of society’s calcifying heart. Director David Schisgall’s film recounts the story of Theo Padnos, an American journalist who was...
View ArticleCall of the Void
The biggest hurdle an homage to classic film noir must overcome is developing a story that is more interesting than the novelty of using noir tropes and visual style. By sheer virtue of its 55-minute...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Derrick Borte
Director Derrick Borte enjoys a challenge, and after his debut helming the Demi Moore-drama The Joneses he’s taking audiences back in time to the 1970s with London Town. His rollicking examination of a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: The Girlfriend Experience
Though not always immediate or obvious, sex exists throughout Steven Soderbergh’s oeuvre. But it’s often hard to trace due to the director’s self-contradictory application of sexuality. His early...
View ArticleThe Accountant
The premise sounds awful. An autistic accountant who is trained as an assassin? What the hell? Yet, director Gavin O’Connor managed to take this crazy notion and a somewhat hackneyed script and make it...
View ArticleDesierto
Desierto is the first feature film directed by Jonás Cuarón, son of Gravity helmer Alfonso Cuarón. Like that film, which the younger Cuarón co-wrote, Desierto is a lean survival picture with horror...
View ArticleCertain Women
Kelly Reichardt’s films are among the most delicate in contemporary cinema. Her stories are spartan to the point of opacity, often giving the impression that they have no real beginning, and,...
View ArticleChristine
On July 15, 1974, Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck took her own life while broadcasting live on air. This nearly mythical event in television history was a cultural flashpoint and symbolic...
View ArticleRediscover: Victory Through Air Power
In the early 1940s, as the flames of World War II steadily engulfed the globe, the United States war machine ramped up in response, producing an unprecedented quantity of heavy weaponry through rapid...
View ArticleMiss Hokusai
Keiichi Hara’s Miss Hokusai is an interesting approach to two genres. Not only is it a biopic of the famed Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (most well-known for “The Great Wave”) told through his...
View ArticleAquarius
Aquarius is a magnificent character study that captures the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of the most arbitrary and brutish structures of power. It stages a conflict between the...
View ArticleLittle Sister
Little Sister presents the coming of age story of a novitiate nun who makes an odyssey back to her childhood home for a week of self-reflection while deciding whether to take her formal vows. Her...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Happy Accidents
Romantic comedies and movies about time travel each tend to be slaves to their restrictive tropes and repetitive structures, but Brad Anderson’s 2000 film Happy Accidents blends the better qualities of...
View Article31
“Murder school is now in session.” That clumsy line from his latest horror flick, 31, more or less summarizes Rob Zombie’s artistic sensibility. Each of the films he writes and directs demonstrate a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: The Informant!
Steven Soderbergh is no stranger to the docudrama. But while the likes of Erin Brockovich and Traffic erred more so on the side of drama with serious discussions of the social issues at hand, The...
View ArticleMoonlight
It’s been said that Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ astonishing new film about the life of a young, black, gay man growing up in Miami, might not be for some audiences. That they won’t be able to identify...
View ArticleKing Cobra
Despite how lucrative it is and the numerous methods by which to access it, porn still seems to many a shadowy underworld shot right under the noses of Ma and Pa America. It could explain Hollywood’s...
View ArticleThe Handmaiden
With its cool color timing, fussy mise-en-scène and confrontational sexuality (including incestual desires), The Handmaiden announces itself early on as a Park Chan-wook film. The director’s first...
View Article