The Mummy
Universal’s The Mummy, meant to kick off its Avengers-style cinematic universe, tries to be both a horror film in the style of 1932’s Mummy and a lighthearted action-adventure like 1999’s Brendan...
View ArticleI Love You Both
Sibling rivalry, especially in love, has been the premise of plenty of romantic comedies, but I Love You Both, written by and starring siblings Doug and Kristin Archibald and directed by Doug, isn’t...
View ArticleThe Hero
Lee Hayden (Sam Elliott) has been making Westerns for over 40 years, but now he pays the bills using the low timbre of his unmistakable voice to sell barbecue sauce on the radio. It’s a reasonable...
View ArticleCamera Obscura
Despite feeling like an overgrown “Twilight Zone” episode that flies dangerously off the rails, Camera Obscura is the rare horror film that fails with style. Writer/director Aaron Koontz has the fixins...
View ArticleRevisit: The Spanish Prisoner
Though it lacks his signature penchant for poetic bursts of profanity, 1997’s The Spanish Prisoner is arguably David Mamet’s finest cinematic experiment to date. Even for those largely uninterested in...
View ArticleDawson City: Frozen Time
In 1978, construction workers digging out a foundation in Dawson City made a surprising discovery, unearthing hundreds of reels of ancient nitrate film stock buried beneath layers of permafrost....
View ArticleMoka
Based on a novel by Tatiana De Rosnay, Moka is a beautifully-photographed genre film that delights in the grit and grime of thriller conventions to build tension and give the viewer a sharp sense of...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: The Handmaid’s Tale
When Volker Schlöndorff began turning Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel The Handmaid’s Tale into a film, the German-born filmmaker lived in a divided country under the constant threats of totalitarian...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Crazy Mama
“It’s the first time in 17 years I haven’t been alone on my birthday. I feel like I have a family again.” This bittersweet line in a mostly cheap period-crime movie shows the kind of human touch that...
View ArticleRough Night
Like last month’s Wonder Woman, the raunchy new comedy Rough Night is directed by a woman and the resulting film offers a new spin on a familiar formula, one that is female-forward but entertaining for...
View ArticleHarmonium
Harmonium, Japanese director Kôji Fukada’s new domestic thriller, is essentially two films stitched together. Transitions are conspicuously absent for most of Harmonium’s runtime, but just around the...
View ArticleKill Switch
Much like its antagonistic megacorporation, Kill Switch’s filmmakers take an innovative concept and use it to create a world that is ultimately unsustainable. In keeping with the best sci-fi, Kill...
View ArticleOnce Upon a Time in Venice
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Bruce Willis stopped giving a fuck. In recent years, we’ve had to watch poor Bruno push himself to heretofore unplumbed depths of apathy. Once Upon a Time in Venice,...
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Revisit: Fox and His Friends
Puerile comedies with gay panic jokes and Braveheart aside, homosexuality in most modern cinema is often portrayed with sensitivity, or, at the very least in hushed tones. It was only 20 years ago or...
View ArticleTransformers: The Last Knight
We’re all complicit in a world where Michael Bay has now made five fucking Transformers movies. Five. The first one was surprisingly fun in an anti-matter universe, Spielberg kinda way. The third one...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Train to Busan
Train to Busan, director/co-writer Sang-ho Yeon’s tale of railway zombie terror, is an example of movie that got major buzz internationally (even snagging an out-of-competition screening at Cannes),...
View ArticleScore: A Film Music Documentary
It all began (along with other aspects of modern filmmaking) with King Kong in 1933. Worried the groundbreaking special effects wouldn’t stop audiences from finding their movie a bit cornball, the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Fighting Mad
Fomented within the demented laboratory of Roger Corman’s New International Pictures, Jonathan Demme’s first four features are all responsive works, hatched with the express purpose of riding the...
View ArticleThe Beguiled
Sofia Coppola’s six films to date have all considered deprivation from a roundabout perspective, swaddled in the lap of luxury, detailing how acute instances of isolation and dislocation can fester...
View ArticlePop Aye
In opening with a shot of a confused older man stumbling down the side of the highway, Pop Aye begins almost identically to Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, except that Pop Aye’s senior citizen is...
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