Revisit: The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd came out more than a decade ago, deeply into George W. Bush’s second term. The country was wracked by paranoia about intelligence services overreaching the bounds of good sense and...
View ArticlePolina
Ballet is famously difficult to capture in narrative film, in part because of how hard it is to fake good ballet. This isn’t a problem for Polina, the new French film from married directors Valérie...
View ArticleRancher, Farmer, Fisherman
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is a straightforward documentary with didactic intentions and a feel-good sentiment as its foundation. It wants the viewer—and its ideal viewer is a child—to come away...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: The Dino King
It’s easy to be puzzled, wading through the toxic swamp that is the Netflix Instant streaming service, about who the proposed audience is for so much of this material. Beyond the growing profusion of...
View ArticleI Do…Until I Don’t
I Do…Until I Don’t may be Lake Bell’s follow-up to the voice-over artist comedy In a World…, but the two comedies have very little in common. While Bell’s feature directorial debut was an insightful...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: The Silence of the Lambs
While arguably not his best film, 1991’s The Silence of The Lambs is Jonathan Demme’s most successful and most celebrated work. Box office returns and Oscars aside, it’s the kind of movie that’s easy...
View ArticleUnlocked
While there’s not much to Unlocked that couldn’t be gleaned from a cursory viewing of the trailer, it still winds up a fruitful exercise in genre, the sort of flick that might have a healthy shelf life...
View ArticleThe Layover
The Layover is a decidedly silly film. This is not an insult; it is deliberately low-stakes, frivolous and, ultimately, dumb. If you squint at it, you will have to conclude it is retrograde,...
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Rediscover: Canoa: A Shameful Memory
Sometimes the most frightening films are based on true events. Supernatural monsters and the fecund vaults of the imagination can also provide scares, but there is something particularly chilling when...
View ArticleDolores
In her famous work The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook, American journalist Mignon McLaughlin wrote, “Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.” Often seen on the walls of...
View ArticleTemple
“So what’s with all this mystery about the temple?” That clumsy question, asked by an American tourist to a blind, elderly Japanese man who is said to have once returned from the sinister mountain...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Batman & Robin Turns 20
When asked, anyone who knows anything about Batman & Robin will likely mention two things: a) Bat-nipples coupled with comically proportioned codpieces; and b) Arnold Schwarzenegger’s terrible...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Cousin Bobby
While historically located in the center of many lives, churches and their clergy are often disinclined to move beyond advisory and charitable functions, demonstrating a conservatism that’s often at...
View ArticleIt
Translating Stephen King’s books to the big screen has always been trouble. Despite early successes such as Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), a horror classic...
View ArticleThe Limehouse Golem
The Limehouse Golem is garishly over-produced in every way: the pulpy script, the period-piece set design, the inches-thick makeup that the characters wear, the transgressive darkness of the London...
View ArticleAnti Matter
Theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss once concluded that “the number of people in the United States who would not recognize the phrase ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ is roughly comparable to the number of...
View ArticleSchool Life
Tracing a year at Ireland’s only boarding preparatory academy, School Life lacks the studied patience of Wiseman’s High School and the charismatic pathos of Philibert’s To Be and to Have. School Life’s...
View ArticleYear by the Sea
No one takes pleasure in critiquing the rare film starring an actress over the age of 60 that focuses on the nature of middle-aged female life. Such projects are too few to not cherish. But...
View ArticleRediscover: Disco Dancer
Hollywood is often considered, especially within our own cloistered cinematic borders, as the fount from which all movie culture springs, the ultimate inventor and arbiter of global tastes and trends....
View ArticleTrophy
The death of Cecil the Lion in 2015 cast the world’s eyes to a decades-old problem: big game hunting. Since President Teddy Roosevelt documented his exploits tracking and killing big cats, this has...
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