From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: My Magic Dog
Until very recently, the made-for-TV movie My Magic Dog was available on Netflix Instant, but at the end of July the title mysteriously disappeared from the company’s instant offerings. It was as if...
View ArticleThe Gift
Jason Bateman is tired of playing nice guys. Best known as Michael Bluth, the moral center of the recently-resurrected television series Arrested Development, this eminently likable leading man has...
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Oeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Cobra Verde
The first shots of Cobra Verde are suitably desolate. Scorched ranch land has cracked and shrunk from years of drought into the flaking scales of a great, dead dragon, and an introductory close-up of...
View ArticleRicki and the Flash
Fear not, fans of Meryl Streep; you can still shout from the rooftops that your idol truly can do anything. The 66-year-old actress does a great job embodying the spirit of Ricki, a washed-up rocker...
View ArticleFantastic Four
Fantastic Four is a complete anomaly among comic-book blockbusters: the first superhero tentpole to be designed, from the ground up, to be hated. Surely, 20th Century Fox didn’t pay for that kind of...
View ArticleDark Places
When Gillian Flynn’s popular novel Gone Girl was adapted into a film, it had the luxury of being guided to the screen by auteur David Fincher, a director capable of elevating any material to a high...
View ArticleRediscover: The True Story of Jesse James
The great critic Robin Wood wrote that nobody gives a bad performance in a Nicholas Ray film. Perhaps one reason The True Story of Jesse James has been brushed under the rug is that it is a...
View ArticleThe Diary of a Teenage Girl
Marielle Heller does with teenage girls what Martin Scorsese did with gangsters. With period panache, a slick soundtrack and a stellar script, she turns a specific category of experience into a story...
View ArticleCall Me Lucky
You’ve probably never heard of Barry Crimmins. He was an influential figure in the Boston comedy scene, founding two clubs that would go on to feature the likes of Paula Poundstone, Steven Wright and...
View ArticleThe Falling
Noted documentary director Carol Morley’s psycho-sexual drama The Falling sets itself up to be a triumph of women’s cinema. Written and directed by Morley, shot by Agnès Godard and featuring an almost...
View ArticleThe Runner
It’s easy to imagine actor Nicolas Cage arising not from the Coppola dynasty, but from primordial swampland. So it makes sense that New Orleans has been the scene of some of his hammiest performances...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Shanghai Triad Turns 20
Give Zhang Yimou credit for perseverance. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Chinese government put this filmmaker through the wringer in a way that resembles the lead character of his 1992 film The Story of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Scream of Stone
Scream of Stone is unmistakably a Werner Herzog film in only a few ways, but when it does smack of the director, it’s as strong a movie as its name implies. When it doesn’t, what it most resembles is...
View ArticleMistress America
Mistress America is a madcap coming-of-age made with the distinctive imprint of writer/director Noah Baumbach and co-writer and star, Greta Gerwig. Having collaborated on Greenberg (2010) and Frances...
View ArticleStraight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton isn’t simply a biopic covering the long career arc of gangsta rap pioneers N.W.A. and its members. Like a prototypical hip-hop song, this is a two-and-a-half hour celebration of...
View ArticlePeople Places Things
Jemaine Clement has really spread his wings since “Flight of the Conchords” wrapped over half a decade ago. Just this year, he saw his co-directorial debut and starring turn in vampire mockumentary...
View ArticleTom at the Farm
Xavier Dolan’s previous four films have all been original stories of twisted relationships, both romantic and familial. Shot in Dolan’s oft-ostentatious style, films like Laurence Anyways and Mommy...
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Revisit: Day for Night
“What is a film director? Someone who’s asked questions about everything. Sometimes he knows the answers.” That’s the question posed and answered by the fictional director named Ferrand early on in...
View ArticleFort Tilden
“Well, I guess this is our rape moment.” “I’m going to have a Xanax, do you want one?” These lines occur late in Fort Tilden, the debut feature of writer-directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles...
View ArticleShe’s Funny That Way
Screwball comedy was already out of fashion when Peter Bogdanovich revived the genre with What’s Up, Doc, the fast-talking follow-up to his 1971 breakthrough The Last Picture Show, and he did little to...
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