Good Fortune
John Paul DeJoria is a good guy. In the brisk documentary Good Fortune, a charming look at the life of the billionaire philanthropist, we’re presented a likable yarn about a man who proves that being...
View ArticleFrom the Ashes
Do you remember the plot of Erin Brockovich? A down and out single mom/legal assistant discovers that Pacific Gas and Electric has secretly poisoned the water of the small town of Hinkley, CA and works...
View ArticleRevisit: Deep Red
A profoundly influential film, Dario Argento’s 1975 giallo thriller Deep Red still manages to fly relatively under the radar with regards to the general film-going public. This is a film that was...
View ArticleBaby Driver
Though Baby Driver is writer/director Edgar Wright’s fifth feature film (sixth if you count 1995’s A Fistful of Fingers), in some ways it feels like a debut. The Cornetto Trilogy was a unique...
View ArticleThe Bad Batch
As evidenced by A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour is a master of casting hypnotic spells with little dialogue and heaps of ambiguity. Outwardly, The Bad Batch looks like Amirpour’s...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery Turns 20
A spy-film spoof starring a Canadian comedian as a walking caricature from ‘60s-era Swinging London would fit right into a time capsule of late-‘90s America. Released in the middle of the blissful...
View ArticleThe Little Hours
The debauchery-ridden weekend is a staple of lewd comedy. Director Jeff Baena’s film Joshy adheres to a similar bent of sex, drugs and indulgence. His follow-up, The Little Hours, attempts to put a...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Handle with Care
Prior to its modern designation as the term of art for wide-scale radio-wave distribution, broadcasting indicated a method of seed dispersal, by which evenness and accuracy are sacrificed to cover...
View ArticleThe B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography
Errol Morris’s new film, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, isn’t a great documentary, and that’s okay. It’s less about opening our eyes to new worlds and more about celebrating the...
View Article2:22
2:22, the new film from Australian director Paul Currie (One Perfect Day), is a beautifully packaged but ultimately inert film. Stylistically, 2:22 fits into the category of slick, vaguely sci-fi urban...
View ArticleThe Skyjacker’s Tale
Despite its succinct runtime, the documentary The Skyjacker’s Tale manages to traverse a multitude of subjects: Vietnam, racial tension, terrorism, true crime, white privilege, post-colonialism,...
View ArticleThe Big Sick
Meeting the parents of a significant other carries with it such implicit awkwardness that there’s an entire film franchise dedicated to that conceit. Maneuvering those types of social situations...
View ArticleSpider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man: Homecoming is the sixth movie to feature the wall-crawler in 15 years, the third to introduce a new actor in the role of Peter Parker, the second to reboot the character since 2012, and the...
View ArticleA Ghost Story
Though clearly inspired by the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Terrence Malick and John Carpenter, David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is just the kind of sensationally original movie the...
View ArticleCity of Ghosts
City of Ghosts tells the story of a band of citizen journalists who take on ISIS in the city of Raqqa, Syria after the so-called Islamic State has seized control. Directed by Academy Award-nominated...
View ArticleRevisit: The Lion King
Walt Disney Pictures produced two animated features in parallel during its early-‘90s zenith. One was seen as a marquee project, on which its elite talent clamored to work. The other was a curio,...
View ArticleDo You Take This Man
Do You Take This Man tells the story of Daniel and Christopher the day before their wedding. As displayed by his morning coffee ritual, Daniel is the meticulous one and has been doing the wedding...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Evil Bong
You can always count on cheesy horror flicks to breathe malevolent life into inanimate objects. Haunted houses and sentient dolls have been midnight movie staples for decades. Stephen King’s lone...
View ArticleFalse Confessions
Prolific Swiss director Luc Bondy’s final film, False Confessions was made in tandem with his own staged production at the Théatre de l’Odeon. The film was shot during the day and the same cast...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Last Embrace
In his first feature outside Roger Corman’s exploitation factory, Jonathan Demme began to find his voice as a director. The 1977 film Handle with Care, originally released as Citizen’s Band, looked at...
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