Lady Macbeth
Set against an austere backdrop of rural Victorian-era England, Lady Macbeth showcases abject cruelty that poses as a revenge story before unfurling into something rotten. The best that can be said for...
View ArticleAtomic Blonde
Underneath its ultraviolent spectacle, curls of cigarette smoke, freely flowing vodka and sexy neon lights, Atomic Blonde displays some level of self-awareness. Whether blasting the “How does it...
View ArticleBrigsby Bear
James Pope, the sweet but naïve only child played by “SNL”’s Kyle Mooney in Dave McCary’s directorial debut, Brigsby Bear, is a sheltered nerd in the most literal sense. At 25, he stills lives at home...
View ArticleIt Stains the Sands Red
It Stains the Sands Red is about Molly (Brittany Allen), a stripper from Las Vegas, who is trying to cross the desert to escape a zombie apocalypse. Determined to make it to an airfield and promised...
View ArticleClik here to view.
First Come, First Staked: Alex Winter Revisits The Lost Boys
The vampires in The Lost Boys may stay young forever, but the actors and the audience who helped raise Joel Schumacher’s film to cult status don’t have access to that same elixir. Thirty years ago, the...
View ArticlePerson to Person
In Dustin Guy Defa’s sophomore feature Person to Person, a cross-section of New Yorkers tackles a single, anxiety-fueled day without ever crossing paths or their stories connecting in any meaningful...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Zoombies
Some people love Jurassic Park. Some people love zombies. Yes, you can combine these two obsessions. Writer/director Glenn R. Miller has made a hellishly awful mashup of references, replete with poor...
View ArticleStrange Weather
In Strange Weather, writer/director Katherine Dieckmann offers a unique take on what is essentially a Western. Darcy Baylor (Holly Hunter) is an administrative assistant at an unnamed university in...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Stop Making Sense
Stop Making Sense has been written about more since Jonathan Demme’s death in April than any of his other films. “Greatest Concert Film of all Time” usually appears somewhere in the headlines, but...
View ArticleDetroit
Be Black, Baby is an extended sequence from Hi, Mom!, Brian De Palma’s 1970 film, that features a group of upper class, New York WASPs taking part in a live theater experiment where they will...
View ArticleWind River
Television actor Taylor Sheridan (Sons of Anarchy) made the unlikely transition to prestige screenwriter after penning a pair of acclaimed Oscar-nominated dramas with Sicario (2015), directed by Denis...
View Article4 Days in France
4 Days in France is a sprawling, uneven, Janus-faced film. At its best, it is a worthy addition to the long tradition of absurdist French road movies. But writer-director Jérôme Reybaud has too little...
View ArticleRediscover: The Fan
It may seem like we have always been obsessed with celebrity, but there was a time when the preoccupation with movie stars and other luminaries seemed not just unhealthy but dangerous. The 1981...
View ArticleSome Freaks
There are plenty of movies about how high school is hell. We’ve all seen legions of misfit teens band together against their beautiful peers, discover their most authentic selves, and ship off to...
View ArticleIcarus
Icarus is an excellent example of following a story wherever it may lead, even if it takes you far away from an initial premise. The film’s setup is simple: director Bryan Fogel, an avid cyclist,...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Princess Mononoke Turns 20
The films made by Japanese director and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki are regularly considered among the greatest of all animated features, and like Disney classics, their appeal endures....
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Something Wild
After Swing Shift was wrested from his control, Jonathan Demme found some solace in music with Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense, one of the greatest concert films. Demme’s next feature was another...
View ArticleGood Time
Good Time, the new low-budget feature from sibling directors Josh and Benny Safdie, belongs to the age of pre-Giuliani New York City, when Martin Scorsese was painting dysfunctional character dramas on...
View ArticleColumbus
The best way to offer a critique of Columbus, written and directed by Kogonada, is by describing the following scene. John Cho’s Jin has been pulled to the city of Columbus, Indiana from his life in...
View ArticleAnnabelle: Creation
Under the watchful eye of producer James Wan, the expanding cinematic universe of The Conjuring (2013) has taken an elegantly old school approach to horror, particularly with the main franchise...
View Article