Rediscover: Weekend
Perhaps it’s the privilege of a second viewing or the five subsequent years of social progressivism, particularly within screen cultures, but Andrew Haigh’s 2011 Weekend just does not come across as...
View ArticleRainbow Time
The announcement of a Duplass Brothers film conjures up the image of a certain kind of indie fare, one that leans heavily toward low-key examinations of interpersonal relationships and, more recently,...
View ArticleOperator
Comfort is a heck of a thing. Our pursuit of it—in our appliances, our devices, our relationships—requires a tremendous amount of effort. We all want to feel special, to be safe and to insulate...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Scream Turns 20
In 1996, Wes Craven was deep in deconstruction mode. He released Vampire in Brooklyn—an ambitious if scattershot mixture of comedy and horror that examines and reimagines traditional vampire lore—in...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: Haywire
It’s a shame Haywire remains the lone action movie in Steven Soderbergh’s filmography. The film wasn’t much of a box office success, nor was it a resounding critical hit, but at a lean ninety minutes,...
View ArticleArrival
Science fiction isn’t just for nerds and action junkies any longer. As anyone who saw Independence Day: Resurgence can tell, the shoot-’em-up days of aliens and spaceships are long past. We like our...
View ArticleThe Monster
Steeped in metaphor, The Monster takes a simple premise, adds ominous atmosphere and leans heavily on its two talented leads to create one of the more moving horror films in recent memory. Kathy (Zoe...
View ArticleThe Love Witch
Anna Biller’s The Love Witch is the best kind of pastiche, the sort that vividly conjures a past that never truly existed. Its rich Technicolor-esque palettes and stilted exploitation dialogue vaguely...
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Rediscover: The Naked Island
When I lived in Japan between 1999 and 2000, my girlfriend at the time expressed disappointment at the country’s embrace of modernity. Maybe she had a fetishistic notion, but she mourned what seemed to...
View ArticleThe Anthropologist
As structured by its three directors, The Anthropologist defies categorization. Ostensibly, it is yet another documentary about the vital need to address climate change, approaching the subject from...
View ArticleNotes on Blindness
Notes on Blindness is a delicate portrait of theologian John Hull and his reflections upon his adult-onset blindness. While the film has poignant moments, it is ultimately less than the sum of its...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
With the 15th game in the main Final Fantasy series due later this month, now is a good time to look back on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within a failed cinematic side venture in the enormously popular...
View ArticleOeuvre: Soderbergh: Magic Mike
Steven Soderbergh’s comic male stripper drama Magic Mike was released in 2012, right in the middle of one of the director’s most prolific and varied periods. With half of the films in this period,...
View ArticleNocturnal Animals
Tom Ford’s transition from fashion magnate and elite rapper name drop fodder to filmmaker has been surprisingly seamless. His debut feature, A Single Man, was a critical success, highlighting Ford’s...
View ArticleFantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
An awkward, yet impossibly dapper Englishman (who happens to be a wizard) frantically pursues an adorable, platypus-like creature (who happens to be a kleptomaniac) through a bustling New York City...
View ArticleThe Similars
A rainy night spent at a grimy, green-tinted bus station requires a definitive soundtrack. When paranoia is at its peak—as it was in 1968 Mexico, with government agents mowing down unarmed students who...
View ArticleElle
Elle begins with a cat watching an off-camera rape scene, collateral crashing and struggling screams the only soundtrack. That’s our introduction to Michele LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert). We watch her lay...
View ArticleI Am Not Madame Bovary
Dealing with bureaucracy is one of those experiences which, while seeming the same all over, actually varies greatly from one country to another, each nation’s ingrained system of red tape reflective...
View ArticleRevisit: A Face in the Crowd
When Donald Trump was elected President of The United States, journos the world over launched an armada of angry think-pieces into the world and a shocking number based their theses on the 1957 Elia...
View ArticleAllied
Allied features two capable leads in Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, a duo whose chemistry was powerful enough to be at the forefront of the Pitt-Jolie divorce rumors. Second, it’s a spy thriller set...
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