Interview: Colm McCarthy
Colm McCarthy has the future on his mind. The director of the new zombie picture, The Girl with All the Gifts, may be celebrating his feature film debut, but the veteran of prestige British genre...
View ArticleRevisit: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that not only does Hedwig and the Angry Inch hold up better than ever, but that the 2001 film remains the definitive version of this remarkable work. Its source...
View ArticleLogan
In his keen, recently published book Hit Makers, Derek Thompson explores the tricky waltz between our inherent neophilia (love of the unfamiliar) and neophobia (aversion to the new), and how the rare...
View ArticleKiki
Nearly three decades removed from Jennie Livingston’s influential documentary Paris is Burning, Swedish filmmaker Sara Jordenö’s nonfiction feature, Kiki, returns to the world of New York City’s...
View ArticleTable 19
Table 19 contains the kind of slight, mildly amusing story that the Duplass brothers could’ve knocked out on a cocktail napkin while half in the bag. It’s basically The Breakfast Club, but with misfit...
View ArticleOeuvre: Kiarostami: Close-Up
Abbas Kiarostami’s 1990 docufiction film Close-Up poses a powerful question about the nature of truth. Is deception inherently malicious or can lying be its own kind of catharsis, a victimless crime...
View ArticleDonald Cried
Say what you will about Facebook’s shady data mining, inconsistent censorship policies and aggressive tax avoidance; the social media mega-site has at least provided a valuable service that was hard to...
View ArticleCatfight
What if Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beat the shit out of each other? That absurdly simplistic premise unfortunately gains no additional substance throughout Onur Tukel’s Catfight. The black comedy...
View ArticleThe Settlers
Do extremists deserve a platform? Responding to the lively protests at Berkeley and Middlebury recently, a certain cross-section of Beltway punditry has maintained that yes, they do: it’s everyone’s...
View ArticleMy Scientology Movie
Scientology’s shady practices are no secret. If a religion created by a science-fiction writer that peddles a path to enlightenment for a price tag stretching into the seven figures isn’t suspect...
View ArticlePersonal Shopper
Whether they’re operating as incisive domestic dramas, unorthodox action thrillers or melancholy nostalgia pieces, Olivier Assayas’ films tend to implicitly express the unsavory underside of a growing...
View ArticleBeauty and the Beast
Despite some recent griping about Disney’s current obsession with pillaging its own cinematic vaults, Walt’s empire was, from the start, built on adaptation. The studio’s first animated feature retold...
View ArticleNakom
Nakom is a straightforward coming-of-age story with rather unique trappings. Namely, it is set in rural northeastern Ghana and is the first film ever made primarily in the region’s Kusaal language....
View ArticleOeuvre: Kiarostami: Life, and Nothing More…
Produced during perhaps the most fertile period of Abbas Kiarostami’s abundant career, Life, and Nothing More… is often positioned as the midpoint of the so-called “Koker Trilogy,” a suite of stories...
View ArticleSong to Song
Tumbling into the modern world with the same wide-eyed curiosity displayed in his epically scaled period pieces, Terrence Malick’s recent films have sought out glimmers of sublimity in everyday...
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Revisit: 45 Years
Andrew Haigh’s Criterion Collection-approved second film, Weekend, was an intimate, sharply observed character study about two young lovers just getting to know each other. In 45 Years, Haigh’s less...
View ArticleThis Beautiful Fantastic
Simon Aboud’s This Beautiful Fantastic bills itself as a contemporary fairy tale about an unlikely friendship between a charmingly eccentric librarian (Jessica Brown Findlay) and her curmudgeonly old...
View ArticleThe Devil’s Candy
Heavy metal and scary movies are two peas in a pod. The relationship dates back to Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne naming their band Black Sabbath after the Mario Bava movie that was screening across...
View ArticleRaw
A film’s reputation tends to precede itself, especially in an age when social media enables film festival attendees the opportunity to log split-second reactions to movies that aren’t even properly...
View ArticleAfter the Storm
My father was a charismatic storyteller, ever able to delight a room by twisting a yarn with inimitably magical agility. He was also profligate with money, often scuffling to make child support...
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