Irrational Man
At one point in Woody Allen’s new film, Irrational Man, Roy (Jaime Blackley), the angelically patient boyfriend of college student Jill (Emma Stone), requests, exasperated: “Can we please change the...
View ArticleThe Stanford Prison Experiment
Every Psychology 101 course covers the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, designed by Dr. Philip Zimbardo as a study of authority and the effects of institutional depersonalization, which ended in chaos...
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Rediscover: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s obsession with the films of Douglas Sirk doesn’t start and end with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974). It’s not only Sirk’s flair for melodrama that attracted Fassbinder to his...
View ArticleAlleluia
Michel (Laurent Lucas) is a con-artist who seduces and swindles women. Gloria (Lola Duenas) is a single mother looking online for a partner, urged to send a message to Michel by her friend and mother....
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Lucky Dog
Animal movies are generally considered a safe bet for kids, but recent exploration of Netflix Instant offerings proves that an extra level of vigilance may be necessary before children or animal lovers...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Fitzcarraldo
It’s nearly impossible to talk about Fitzcarraldo without discussing Burden of Dreams. The former, Werner Herzog’s most ambitious film to date, is the subject of the latter, a documentary by Les Blank...
View ArticleSouthpaw
In a world where athletic achievement is often equated with actual heroism, sports movies are the go-to vehicle for redemption stories. There’s little need for metaphor when our hero can literally...
View ArticlePhoenix
Director Christian Petzold sets the tone for his slow burn WWII melodrama Phoenix with moving performances of the 1943 Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash song, “Speak Low,” which has become a standard and suits the...
View ArticleListen to Me Marlon
Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors in film history. He brought unprecedented levels of realism to the screen in the 1950s, chucking the standard style of melodrama to give performances of true...
View ArticleRevisit: Madonna: Truth or Dare
Twenty years before Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Katy Perry: Part of Me, a two-hour, black-and-white documentary about Madonna was the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Following the pop...
View ArticleBig Significant Things
In the past two weeks, I have driven a total of 18 hours through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee and saw my fair share of the rural South and its tourist-traps (Cajun Encounters,...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Zombie Hunter
Dig deeply enough into the Netflix horror section—past The Human Centipede 2 and a dozen Hellraiser and Leprechaun sequels—and you’ll find an axe-wielding Danny Trejo looming large on a poster for...
View ArticleHorse Money
Horse Money is the culmination of a career founded upon constant aesthetic and, more importantly, ethical revision. From the moment Pedro Costa’s second film, Casa de Lava, attempted to add social...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Where The Green Ants Dream
Key to the Aboriginal Australian cosmology is the concept of the Dreamtime, a sort of animistic trance state which functions as both a pre-historical antecedent to creation and a parallel reality...
View ArticleThe End of the Tour
Part biopic, part intellectual road trip, The End of the Tour follows Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky as he watches, records and eats candy bars with David Foster Wallace. It’s a warm and pleasant...
View ArticleFive Star
Writer-director Keith Miller’s street-smart crime drama Five Star features a clear-eyed depiction of New York gang life. Shot in and around a Fort Greene housing project, the film follows “five-star”...
View ArticleA LEGO Brickumentary
In 2014, The LEGO Movie’s bizarre CGI world somehow created a metafictional and fun film without ever crossing over into the territory of an overlong commercial. In 2015, there is A LEGO Brickumentary...
View ArticleRevisit: Parents
You may already know Bob Balaban. Maybe you’ve seen him as a repertory player of Wes Anderson or Christopher Guest. Maybe you know him as Russell Dalrymple, the fictional head of NBC subjected to...
View ArticleBest of Enemies
As their second nightly debate at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach got underway, Gore Vidal came out swinging, charging his opponent, William F. Buckley, with ideological...
View ArticleThe Cocksure Lads Movie
“I guess it’s just a case of the dropsies/ They drop me like a dirty shirt/ Oooh those flopsy topsy turvy dropsies/ Really hurt.” Those inane lyrics, delivered by Reg (Adam McNab) with the cloying...
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